Ronin
by Peptuck
Summary: In the gritty underworld, a fallen knight struggles to survive, putting his talents to work among the bosses of organized crime. But as he carves his own place in the darkness, he is assaulted by his past, his own regrets, and more mysterious forces....
1. Prologue: Big Pimpin'

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**_Standard Issue Disclaimer To Save My Ass From The Ridiculous Impossibility ofLawsuits: _**I do not own Final Fantasy VIII or any of the characters, locations, concepts, and so on and so forth from whichthat are used within thisstory. They belong to Square-Enix. Original characters andentities represented within this storybelong to me.

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**Ronin: A Final Fantasy Crime Drama**...or something.

* * *

**_Prologue: Big Pimpin'_**

While Deling City had recently been renamed Galbadia City, and had shifted its namesake as swiftly as the nation's internal politics, which themselves flowed as freely as desert sands, the metropolis had always gone by one common name ever since electricity had been adopted: The Shining Night. Such a name defined a city that gleamed and glowed and was vastly more busy and active during the nighttime hours than it was during the daylight. There were often jokes about how Galbadians were actually vampires, as much as they seemed to shun the light.

Thus it was that as the sun was setting, most people in Galbadia City were still at home or even asleep, and the streets were quieter than they would be in the next few hours. This applied an unusual irony to the term "in broad daylight." It was during this time that the seedier elements sometimes emerged and operated in the shining sunlight, in a bizarre inverse to how things operated in just about every other civilized part of the world, even in the rest of Galbadia.

The man standing in the parking lot of one of the hotels on the edge of Galbadia City loved that sunlight. After all, nothing did better to showcase his gleaming, gold-inlaid teeth and the multitude of diamonds that stretched across his wrists, fingers, and neck quite like the sun. The man, who on the street was referred to as "Whitey D-Bomb Playa Killa" (shortened to "Whitey D") was dressed as appropriate for his occupation, covered in fur coats, expensive jewelry, and a richly made purple silken suit. His head was topped with a wide-brimmed pink hat with a two-foot-long feather atop his head, and he walked with an odd, wide, confident strut, the strut of a pimp.

"Alright, my bitches," he said with a gleaming smile to the two scantily clad, painted women before him. "Ya'll know the drill. Time for the usual cut from ya'll's clients, understand?" the two prostitutes sighed as they reached into their purses to pay their pimp, and Whitey D waited patiently for the two "ladies of the day" (as they were known around this city) to give him his rightful cut. After all, Whitey D was respected, exceptionally so, and he had plans to cut out the prostitution business from the local dominant crime family, the Anarak Syndicate. Just three weeks ago, these two prostitutes had worked for the local area boss Enrico Fornes, but now paid him their cut.

He hefted the gil - an excellent take for this week - in his hands, and counted the money. The two women started to move away, but he barked a quick command.

"Hey, hey, hey! No walkin' off until I check my check, understand? If I find out either of you ho's is hustlin' me-"

His warning came to an end as all three present found their attention being drawn to a vehicle rolling into the parking lot. For an instant, they all feared it was the police - which would mean a significant part of their income would go to bribes - but those fears were soon unfounded, as the vehicle was a nondescript blue four-door sedan. However, they kept watching it as it drove across the lot and came to a stop before the trio. The door clicked and opened up, and out stepped the driver.

"Now who is this?" Whitey D asked indignantly. "This is a private meeting between me and my bitches, player. Get on out of here now."

The driver glanced between the prostitues and the pimp. He was clad in a black leather jacket and blue jeans, with a blue shirt of some kind underneath. Closely shaved blonde hair was covered a black watchcap on his head. A rough blonde goatee marked his chin, and steely-blue eyes were set into his face. He fixed his eyes on Whitey D, frowned, and nodded.

"You're Whitey D," he said calmly, the statement not a question. The pimp, however, took it as such.

"And what if I am?" he demanded. "Would that make you understand the importance of this transaction taking place with my bitches, and why it needs to be so very private?"

"Not really," he answered with a shrug, and then smiled. "I honestly couldn't give a shit. I'm just here to deliver a gift from my boss." He turned and reached into his car.

"A gift? Now who would be givin' Whitey D a present? Its not my birthday."

"Nope," answered the man as he turned back, snapped up his right hand, and smashed a tire iron into the side of Whitey D's forehead, sending his pimp hat flying and his pimp ass to the pavement. A flowering bloom of blood erupted from the pimp's forehead as he hit the ground, his entire upper cranium shattered by the impact. The man stepped over to the pimp's body and slammed the tire iron down hard a second time into the middle of his chest, a sickening snap-crunch audible as the iron crushed ribs and organs like water balloons and wet cardboard.

The two prostitutes stared on in abject shock as the man straightened up, pausing only to wipe the tire iron with the fur coat of the now distinctly deceased pimp, and he looked up at the women.

"Enrico Fornes said to tell you two to show up back at the club," he grunted. "No retaliation for working with this trash, as long as you're punctual." With that, the man turned, tossed his tire iron back into the car, and plopped back down in the driver's seat. The door slammed shut with a dull impact, and the car rolled forward, turned, and exited the lot, leaving the two women to stare at the brutally but efficiently beaten corpse of their former pimp.

* * *

"Enrico," he called over the cell phone a few minutes later as he drove back across town. "Consider your turf secured." 

"Great, great," came the response from his boss, his satisfaction apparent in his voice. "Good work. Very good work. Head back to the club, I'll see what else I can get you to do for me, eh?"

"Right," he grunted in reply, and closed the cell phone, before tossing it carelessly into the seat beside him. He shook his head, asking himself again why he'd chosen to work for slime like the Anarak Syndicate, the biggest crime family in Galbadia. Two years ago, he'd been at the top of the world, one of the most powerful men on the planet, and here he was, whacking upstart pimps for organized crime bosses.

How the mighty had fallen.

He glanced at himself in the mirror, and scratched a spot above the bridge of his nose, an action that had become habit lately. He spared a second glance at the mirror, and at the scar running from his right eye up his forehead, and killed the line of self-deprecating thoughts.

"At this rate," he muttered to himself, "I'll be as bad as Squall . . . ."

* * *

**A/N:** This is something I've been toying with for a while, ever since I played too much Grand Theft Auto. A little bit of a crime drama, set in FFVIII's world, with our resident favorite antihero/villian/crazy guy as the main hero of the story. Ronin won't be an epic, like other fics I've written, or at least not the same kind of epic. This isn't the epic of grand battles and struggles against titanic forces of encoroaching evil, but the grittier story of a man making his way on the streets, slugging it out in back alleys and the gutter as opposed to massive battlefields or far off mystical cities of the gods. 

I'm not sure where this is headed, but I have a rough idea and a basic plotline carved out.

Until the first chapter...


	2. First Job: Blackmail

_**First Job: Blackmail**_

"Now see? This is the muscle I need, right here. This young thug. Already back from whacking a thorn in my side and bringing me back my girls, and without the slightest difference between now, and when he left. Tough, disciplined, and dangerous. Just the guy I like."

Enrico Fornes sat behind his desk, smiling and smoking a cigar, resplendent in his expensive silk business suit and shining gold necklace. A mid-level capo in the Anarak Syndicate, Enrico was a man who was accustomed to being both hands-on and being powerful and able to exert his will. The best word for him was _thin;_ he had thinning black hair atop his thin face, a thin nose, beneath thin eyes that were always slitted, with a thin mustache over thin lips that were always clenching a thin cigar when it wasn't held in his thin hands. Those were mounted on thin, bony arms and attached to a thin body and equally thin, bony legs. The only thing about Enrico that was "large" and "thick" was the chrome .45 magnum revolver that sat in easy reach, capable of blasting a grapefruit-sized hole in someone. An old, uncleaned stain to the "young muscle's" left on the wall was a testament to how fast and sharp Enrico was at using said revolver. Just to add to the warning, a figure stood behind Fornes' chair, dimly visible in the shadows behind the desk, an obvious bodyguard.

The young muscle himself was a relative newcomer to the criminal world, and despite his relatively famous exploits, he was not well known. After all, he had been nothing more than a simple minion to the feared and mighty Sorceress Edea, and almost all memory of her rule focused on her, and not her personal assistant. A shave of his thick blonde hair and the growing of a beard, plus the judicious use of clothes that didn't fit his previous appearance had helped mask his appearance, and he looked like a totally different person. It might have helped that part of the Galbadian peoples' devotion to Edea's short-lived rule was through her magic, and a number of Galbadians had reported a strange "haze" in their minds when they remembered that time, a haze that helped cloud over who he had been.

Enrico Fornes, therefore, had no idea that the "young muscle" who was doing his dirty work for him was in fact Seifer Almasy, ex-SeeD cadet, ex-Sorceress' Knight, and the former general who had commanded the entire nation's military for a couple of months. And that was a good thing; if the Anarak Syndicate knew who he was, they would also know that a number of very angry and wealthy people who had suffered due to Seifer's "indiscretions" in Esthar and Trabia had a series of generous bounties out on his head, dead or alive, roughly totaling in the area of five _million_ gil.

"Okay, kid. You've done good," remarked Enrico, in his distinctly urban Galbadian accent. "I know you've got the muscle to handle jobs involving taking out street punks, but I need a little more effective grunt work out of you. I can always get my associates and soldiers to do the squeeze on pimps like that mess you left in the street. But you . . . I can tell things. I need you to do something . . . Specialized."

"Like what?" Seifer replied calmly, waiting for Enrico to explain things. He was the type to be unusually verbose, even judging from the explanation as to how to kill Whitey D earlier that day. Seifer normally didn't have much patience for people who didn't cut things short, but he knew to listen to someone as dangerous as Fornes, even if he disliked working for him. After all, the Anarak paid him reasonably well, especially for a brand new off-the-street enforcer.

"I got a friend. He's working in the armored trucking business. He gives me a tip about some fresh gil, hot off the presses at the mint on the southeast side of town, being shipped to a bank on the far end of town. He's also done me a nice favor and made sure that the truck's gasoline tank is . . . lightened, so to speak. The truck will be leaving at precisely 9:30 PM tonight, and stop for gas shortly afterward. You follow that truck, wait for it to gas up, and then bring it, and its cash, to that little garage we've got on the east end of town. You get a five percent cut of the money, which should be about fifty grand for you. Understand?"

"Just fine," Seifer grunted, suddenly feeling like he wanted to get the hell out of this room and get on with the job. Something inside him churned at the notion that he was actually doing petty theft for this skinny crook, something the old Seifer never would have tolerated.

"I'll be back after I get your money," Seifer finished bluntly, and turned and walked out the door without another word. He avoided slamming the door, managing to contain his disgust at the thin gangster and his even greater disgust with himself as he walked out of the repurposed warehouse and out into the waning sunlight of Galbadia City. The ex-knight-turned-mafia soldier walked over to the chap blue sedan he'd stolen a few weeks ago and repainted, and drove off, again wondering why he had sunk so low.

* * *

Inside Fornes' office, the capo settled back in his chair, puffing his cigar thoughtfully. He glanced to the side, at the enforcer who had hovered over his shoulder in the shadows behind his chair. 

"What do you think, Nicholai?" asked Enrico. The figure behind Enrico's seat shrugged, and scratched the thick black beard and mustache that marked his face. The man stepped out from behind the shadows, head bowed in thoughtful consideration. Nicholai was from Trabia, a tough, unforgiving place, and before joining the Anarak Syndicate he'd been an agent and spy (and, according to some reports, an effective assassin) for Galbadian Intelligence. He was one of the most trusted men in the Syndicate, and just as dangerous as trustworthy. Clad in an expensive but rugged black suit, complete with a long coat and black gloves, the enforcer looked like any other mafia gorilla, but the careful and deliberate way he carried himself set him apart from the thugs and low-level capos and officers employed elsewhere by Anarak. His eyes were shaded behind dark sunglasses, and that facelessness, combined with his deliberate demeanor and calm, dark voice, made him an imposing figure.

"Something troubles him," Nicholai said, shaking his head. "I think this one is principled. He does not like working for you. Perhaps it's the business he doesn't like, or maybe he just finds you personally unacceptable, but he not happy working with us at this point."

"So, should we . . . Retire him early?" Enrico asked, and Nicholai quickly shook his head.

"Many people who work for us aren't happy with their lot in life," answered Nicholai. "We should hold judgment. He is very mercenary, whatever his principles may be, and our money matters more than his displeasure with us. As long as we pay him well, he will be worthwhile."

Enrico nodded, tapping his cigar on its ashtray, considering and agreeing with Nicholai's words. Few within Enrico's particular crew realized how much their continued breathing rested on Nicholai's character judgment, and this kid, this punk they had no name for, had just been favorably judged. He'd get to live . . . for now.

"One thing I want to know, Nicholai," Enrico added. "Find out his name. I don't like _not_ knowing who someone is before they join us. Figure out who this kid is."

"Naturally."

* * *

The heavy armored truck pulled into a gas station barely five minutes after it had left the mint. As the guards got out, one going inside to get some snacks while the other pumped fuel, Seifer quietly parked his sedan several blocks down the street, well behind a restaurant. He stepped out and focused, casting a hasting spell on himself, and quickly left the parking lot. The ex-SeeD ducked into back alleys as he moved through the intervening city blocks, not wanting to step out into the open streets and the crowds and cars of freshly awakened Galbadians. The spell allowed him to move quickly, and within a couple of minutes Seifer was in sight of the gas station. 

A quick glance and examination showed a single security camera mounted above the pumps. Seifer noted the camera and the direction it was facing, and walked out toward the pumps quickly, keeping out of sight and approaching so that the camera wouldn't spot his face. The pumping guard was finishing up with his gas and was replacing the nozzle when Seifer walked up to him and grunted.

The guard looked up, to see Seifer looking down. The guard looked down, and saw Seifer's boot. Then the guard saw sky, and Seifer was leaping over him as he fell to the pavement.

A second later, Seifer was in the truck, had gunned the engine and slammed the door, and was screaming out of the parking lot. The guard inside only became aware that something was wrong when he stepped outside with a bag full of doughnuts and saw only his unconscious partner and no truck.

GCPD was on the scene in fifteen minutes, but the robbery had been so fast and so quiet that they had nothing to work with; no evidence, no suspects, and no van; by the time they had gotten the call about the stolen van, Seifer already had the vehicle off the streets and in an Anarak Syndicate garage, ready for chopping. Quick, clean, precise, effective.

Thirty minutes after the theft, a taxi pulled up to the restaurant that Seifer had parked behind, and the ex-SeeD exited, paying the driver a hefty tip with his newfound money, and walking toward his car, parked well away from the other vehicles in a quiet part of the lot, with few lights and a lot of shadows, just the way Seifer preferred it.

As he neared his car, however, he heard another vehicle rolling up close to him, and glanced behind him to see a blue and black police cruiser driving by, the letters "GCPD" emblazoned on the side. Playing it casually, he stepped toward his car and opened the door, quietly wondering if the cops suspected him.

The police car stopped directly in front of his car, and he heard the door open. Seifer paused, and looked up at the car for a moment, effecting his best "honest citizen confronted by the police" expression. The car's driver, a dark-skinned man in the black uniform and blue jacket of a Galbadia City police officer, stared right back at him and smiled.

"_Almasy," _he said with a self-satisfied grin, and Seifer froze. One hand started to drop toward his side, where he kept a handgun ready for just such an occasion.

"Who?" Seifer asked, pretending to be confused.

"Don't play stupid with me, Seifer," the cop said, still grinning. "Yeah, I know who you are, all too well. Get your hand away from the gun, _now_." Seifer sneered.

"Make me, jack_abalbllible_-"

The rest of Seifer's response was cut off as the passenger window of the police cruiser rolled down and a pair of shock tazer cords stabbed into his chest, pumping the ex-cadet with thousands of volts of electricity. Seifer's body jerked spasmodically and he fell backwards against his car. Both passenger doors opened, and a pair of men in ashen and black urban camouflage stepped out, one holding a shotgun while the other had a pistol holstered at his hip and a tonfa in hand. Aside from their uniforms, they wore black flak vests and caps, along with sunglasses and head-sets. The soldier with the tonfa viciously grabbed Seifer and slammed him onto the hood of his sedan, while the second camouflaged man leveled his shotgun at Seifer's head and ominously pumped the weapon.

"Asp," Seifer managed to flubb out as he regained control of his body enough to speak, recognizing the two men's uniforms, as well as the silver serpent shoulder patch they wore on their upper arms. They were Asp soldiers, agents of the largest private military company in the world, even bigger than Garden and SeeD, though not as individually as powerful. Seifer had heard that Asp had been hired to supplement the GCPD in the wake of Caraway's ascension to rule Galbadia, and now he was getting a firsthand look at them.

_Mercs and some asshole cop who knows my name jumping me . . . shit._

"Now this, gentlemen, is a piece of work right here," said the officer as he walked around his police vehicle, still smiling. He slowly shook his head. "The man himself. Seifer _Fucking_ Almasy." He walked forward, nodding as he neared Seifer's spot on the hood of his car.

"You know, I have to hand it to you. I respect a man like you, as dangerous as you. I didn't want to believe it myself, but after hearing you were in town, I had to check up on it myself. And sure enough, here you are, the former leader of this entire nation, a street criminal jacking trucks and whacking pimps. Amazing."

"How did you-"

"Find you?" answered the cop. "Ways and means. I've got some friends, who know some people, who happen to know who that mysterious blonde knight with Edea really was. Rumor's flying around the city about a blonde mafia gorilla with phenomenal strength and I checked into it. That goatee and haircut might fool the ordinary Galbadian citizen, but for someone like me, it doesn't happen."

"And who's the lovely jackass I'm speaking to?" Seifer growled, and the cop chuckled.

"GCPD Sergeant Fred Johnson," answered the cop. "But you can call me 'sir.' I, on the other hand, will be calling you 'bitch.' Because that is exactly what you are, bitch." Johnson walked forward, leaning over Seifer, and stared right into his eyes.

"You see, I know all about you. I know who you are, I know what you've done, and I can so very, very easily make one phone call and have every bounty hunter, mercenary, hitman, and pissed off member of a special interest group on this continent coming here trying to claim the bounty on your shaved head. But I won't." he straightened up, smiling again.

"As long as you stay on me and my friends' good side, we'll be all right, understand, bitch?"

Seifer grunted, and Johnson nodded. The shotgun-wielding mercenary immediately smashed the stock of his weapon across Seifer's face. Blood erupted from his nose.

"I said, do you understand me, _bitch?_"

"Yeah, I gotcha just fine, asshole," Seifer responded.

"Good," answered Johnson. "And just to make things clear, that little bitch of yours, down at the hospital? The one who's barely hanging on to life because you had a price on your head and she got in the way? I know about her too. And if I decide I'm displeased with you, I'll let everyone know that you do have something important to you, Almasy. And you know what might just happen to her."

Johnson nodded again, and the shotgun-wielder smashed Seifer across the face a second time, and the tonfa-wielder grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him up, before throwing him to the pavement.

"We'll call you if we need you, bitch," Johnson finished. He turned and stepped back into his car, and the Asp soldiers moved to follow him, but not before one of them kicked him in the ribs for good measure. Seifer lay on the ground for a moment as he heard the cruiser's doors slam shut and the vehicle start to drive off, and slowly stood, touching his nose. His fingers came away bloody, and he frowned, casting a quick healing spell on his face.

"Bastards," he muttered under his breath. He shook his head, surprised someone had caught up with him that quickly.

_Maybe I should just get Fujin and Raijin and skip town first chance . . . ._

That would be the logical thing to do, but something inside him rebelled against the notion, of retreating from any fight, even against an enemy supposedly as dangerous as this Johnson cop and his Asp cronies. The only other time he'd fled was when Squall and Garden had confronted him at Balamb Harbor, and that was when he had an army of Galbadian troops under his responsibility.

Seifer settled into the driver's seat of his car, shutting the door, and sat back, closing his eyes. He didn't want to retreat, and every instinct in him told him to meet these bastards head on, to drive after Johnson's car and slam him into the pavement and show those bastards that they didn't _fuck_ with Seifer Almasy.

But that desire was tempered by what Johnson had said, and the fact that he was right, and Seifer did have a weakness: Fujin and Raijin, who were at Riener Memorial Hospital across town, Fujin recovering from wounds she had suffered - _protecting him -_ during the last encounter with bounty hunters after the price on his head.

After a couple moments of sitting there behind the wheel of his car, Seifer Almasy shook his head and started the engine. What had happened to Fujin was his fault, and he had to pay for it. Half the reason he was working with Enrico and Anarak was to pay for their hospital bills.

_What the hell does this Johnson guy want with me, anyway?_

That thought struck Seifer as he pulled out onto the busy nighttime streets of Galbadia City. His first thought - that they were going to use him for police work - was quickly quashed. If they were using him for honest cop work, they would have hauled him in and given him a job directly; that was how Galbadia worked, blunt and direct. But here was Johnson plus goon-for-hire pounding him into submission and extorting the possibility of work out of him. The answer, Seifer realized a few moments later, was painfully clear: Johnson was a corrupt cop, and that meant he was going to extort dirty work out of Seifer. Great; more assassinations and transport jobs, and he wasn't getting paid, either.

Thoughts of ditching town once again wormed their way into Seifer as he crossed the city. He dismissed them; Fujin was still in critical condition, though stable, and couldn't be moved. Until he could get her out of town, he would be stuck with Johnson's threats hanging over his head, and he certainly couldn't risk letting bounty hunters or corrupt cops go after his friends in their current state. After all, there was nothing to stop Johnson from trying to collect the bounty on Seifer's head after his usefulness had reached an end. Not to mention the dangers of working with Anarak . . . .

Thirty minutes of similar thoughts brought Seifer across town, toward the Riener memorial Hospital. He parked and got out of his car, and walked inside the building. A short elevator ride took him to the third floor. He walked down the antiseptic hallways, passing nurses and cleaning crew, counting the numbers on the doors until he reached 324, Fujin's room. He quietly rapped on the polished institutional wooden door, and when no one answered, he stepped inside.

Raijin was sprawled out on a recliner, most distinctly asleep, head inclined back and mouth hanging open. Stubble marked the big, dark-skinned man's chin, and he looked like he needed to take a shower sooner or later. Seifer only spared Raijin a moment, and then looked to Fujin, where she lay on the hospital bed.

Guilt, an almost alien emotion, washed over Seifer as he looked at her. Her skin was pale, paler than normal, and her steel-gray hair was lip against the white pillows. She was asleep, both eyes closed, her decorative eyepatch safe in the cabinet beside herbed. He saw a very subtle motion of her chest as she breathed; it was shallow, but stronger than it had been for the last couple of days. An angry red scar traced from the left side of her chin down her throat and underneath her white hospital gown, one of the injuries she'd suffered a week ago during the battle that had hospitalized her.

Seifer walked over toward her, and touched her cold hand with one of his own. The chill shocked him, but he could feel her pulse within her veins. The former cadet looked over her, and closed his eyes, his other hand reaching up to his face and touching the bridge of his nose.

_My fault. All of this is my fault. My sins, but you paid the price. Fujin . . . I . . . I'm . . . ._

" . . .sorry," he managed to say, his voice like a broken whisper shattering against the still air. He pulled his hand away from his nose and eyes, and his fingers came away damp and warm. He stared at his hand for a long moment, eyes still burning, and settled down in the chair beside Fujin's bed, and sat there, still and unmoving, until the fatigue and long day and night finally took their toll, and brief oblivion engulfed him.

* * *

-

* * *

**A/N:** Anyone who was around waaaaay back when I first started posting here may remember an old story about Seifer trying to atone for his sins, and how Fujin being injured was a big part of that story. Let's just say the plot is getting recycled a bit, eh?

Several of the characters encountered in this chapter are based off similar characters from other "crime stories." Nicholai, for example, is based off Josef Vorinov from Mercenaries. The others, as well, have their own clearly aped crime characters as well.

The Asp agency and mercenaries are something new I added in. They'll be much more important later on, and I plan to carry them over to another project I've got waitingin the wings.

An additional note: several characters will have noted accents in this story. SinceI can't explain what they sound like in narraration, I'll explain here.

"Urban Galbadian" is New Jersey/Italian. The people of northern Galbadia and especially Deling/Galbadia City talk like people from the New York/New Jersey area. "Southern Galbadian/Timber" is Texan/Southwestern USA. "Dollet" isa catch-all accent for the various accents used in the British Isles and Ireland. Imagine it as you see fit and appropriate for a character speaking such an accent. 'Trabian" is Russian/Scandanavian. (no, Selphie won't have a Russian accent here. Ew.) "Estharian" is a catch-all East Asian accent. The "Estharian" language itselfwill be Japanese, as will the written characters. This is just to help you imagine what is being spoken if I write someone speaking orreading "Estharian."Balamb and FH have no specified accents. All of these will bereferenced in this story or other, related ones later down the line.

Also, one last thing: while this story is primarily focused on the underworld and crime families, that won't be the only thing you'll see in this story. In fact, expect elements of romance, suspense, and maybe even horror to show up...

Until next chapter...


	3. Second Job: Hit

_The last attacker was dead, and Seifer grinned to himself. Another gang of bounty-hunters down. Maybe this would teach them to stop underestimating him and his posse. Though the sophistication in this last attempt was surprising-_

"_DOWN!"_

_Seifer was shoved forward, as one last opponent came out of hiding for a moment, chucking a trio of knives at him. Above him, as he slammed down into the rain-soaked stones of the bridge, he saw Fujin, chakram in hand, interposing herself between him and the knives, the blades stabbing into her torso and throat-_

"Fujin!" he shouted, jerking forward. His hands scrabbled for his pistol, only to find it not at his side. He looked around for an instant, and suddenly realized he was in the darkened hospital room that was now their temporary home. The dim beeping of a decathetar could be heard, and he saw no one in the room besides the unconscious woman in the bed in front of him and her oversized brother, sleeping like a log in a chair on the other side of the room.

Seifer realized he was panting viciously, and tried to control his breathing and his heart rate.

_A dream. Just a dream._

He closed his eyes, and willed away the vivid image of Fujin intercepting those blades, the poison coating them running into her veins even as Raijin had crushed the last bounty hunter . . . .

* * *

_**Second Job: Hit**_

* * *

The sun was rising, and that meant that much of the city was preparing to go to sleep. For Seifer Almasy, though, that meant it was time to go to work . . . Work now being serving as muscle for a crime boss with a corrupt cop hanging over his shoulder ready to drop a hammer on him if he didn't do as he said. Wonderful. After rousing Raijin and making sure that the nurses would keep a close eye on Fujin - the poison had been flushed out of her system, but she was still recovering from the wounds and the chemical's effects - he headed outside to his parked sedan. The engine rumbled to life, and he rolled out into the lightening streets, which themselves were rapidly thinning of cars.

The sun had fully risen on the horizon when Seifer pulled into a parking spot outside Enrico Fornes' warehouse, the front where all his mafia operations went on. This place didn't store any "merchandise," as such a thing wouldcause all manner of headachesif the police or federal agents showed up. No, Enrico kept the evidence of his real business at arm's length.

Seifer walked through the warehouse, escorted by two large mafia goons with bulging jacket holsters beneath their expensive suits, and stepped into the office at the back of the warehouse. Enrico was waiting for him, smiling his tiny, thin smile as smoke drifted past his skinny face. Nicholai waited in the shadows,staring at Seifer impassivelybehind his sunglasses.

"Welcome back, my boy," Enrico declared with a smile. He glanced to Nicholai and chuckled, pointing at Seifer. "This is the man, Nicholai. I can see great things coming from him, don't you?" Nicholai didn't answer, and Enrico turned back to Seifer.

"Look, kid," he began. "Working for me requires trust. I have to know I can trust you. I mean, I already know I can trust you to waste a pimp or steal some cash, but I need to test you, to see if you're really up to snuff. You've got potential, and I want to know just how willing you are to use that potential for me and Anarak. Who knows, you might just get your own crew some day, eh? You might be rich and powerful, like me!"

Seifer kept his expression emotionless, not wanting to betray his revulsion at the idea. Him, becoming some petty mafia boss like Enrico?

_No, no, no. Not happening._

"So, anyway," Enrico continued. "You need money. I have money. So. Nicholai's going to see how willing you are to work for me. You two are going to pay a visit to one of my . . . "dealers." A dealer that's been keeping a cut of the profits to himself, a cut that rightfully belongs to me." Enrico narrowed his eyes dangerously. "I always get my cut, understand? When I don't, I get . . . Disappointed. And when I'm disappointed, I inevitably get angry. I might be liable to go and cut his throat, put five bullets in his head, or crush his skull with a shoveland dump his corpse in a landfill. But I'm very busy, and I need to keep my suit clean, so you guys go do it for me, okay?"

* * *

"We'll take my car," Nicholai had said as they stepped out of the warehouse into the dawn's early light. Seifer shrugged and agreed, not really caring. One of the Anarak gorillas went out and retrieved an old-fashioned-looking black sedan with an oddly thick metal body and glass that was distinctly high-quality and likely bulletproof. Nicholai climbed in and unlocked the passenger door, and Seifer stepped into the sedan and slammed the door closed. 

"Who's the hit?" he asked as Nicholai pulled his car out of the parking lot. The Anarak enforcer reached into his jacket and pulled out a couple of photographs. Seifer glanced them over, committing the man's face to memory. Brown hair, small face, silly beard, mustache that looked like a hairy walrus stuck to his face. Easy to identify, easy to kill.

Seifer glanced away from the picture, at the passing day-lit buildings as Nicholai drove down the street toward the east side of the city. A year or two back, he wouldn't have abided cold-blooded assassinations like this; he had been a bit too honorable, even if he had been violent and dangerous. While he'd been Ultimecia's thrall, he had done some heinous things, however, and memories of those actions still gnawed at him. Fanaticism was one of the first steps in turning humans into monsters . . . .

Still, he banished any nagging feelings of guilt for this operation. This man they were after was a dealer, a criminal who made his money by supporting crime and violence that hurt good, honest citizens. Even if he was doing it for some petty mob boss, he was still doing the world a favor.

"So, kid, you got a name?" Nicholai asked suddenly, cutting into Seifer's thoughts. The ex-cadet glanced at the Trabian enforcer, and didn't answer.

"Enrico likes to know things," he explained. "Unknowns, he doesn't like very much." Nicholai then looked to Seifer again, behind his black sunglasses.

"Tough shit for Enrico," Seifer replied with a mirthless grin. Nicholai chuckled quietly as they turned a corner.

"So, if there's no name, where did you come from, kid?" he asked. Seifer didn't answer, once again. "To do what you do, no questions, no hesitation . . . You have to be trained. Military?"

"Possibly," Seifer grunted.

"Not just possibly," replied the enforcer. Seifer glanced at the Trabian as he spoke. "You're quick, prompt, efficient, and discreet. You know how to kill and steal and do it all quickly and without attracting uneeded attention. While a normal soldier can do these things, it takes a special person with special training to do what you do so well."

"I'm very talented," replied the ex-knight, and Nicholai nodded, not arguing with that statement.

"You are, my young friend, you are," replied the Trabian. "But that's not all. You're good . . . special forces good. What unit were you in?"

Seifer didn't answer, and instead remained silent as a stone. Nicholai continued speaking in the silence, however.

"You're not Galbadian, that's for certain," he explained. "Even if you lied about your age and joined very young, you'd still be too young to have even qualified for Ranger or Paratrooper training. Dollet? Member of the 125th, perhaps? No, still too young." Nicholai looked to Seifer, and held up a finger. "Ah. I know.

"_SeeD."_

Seifer didn't answer, but reflexively tensed up as Nicholai spoke, and the perceptive enforcer caught the motion, and knew he'd hit the mark.

"Which Garden?" Nicholai asked casually. "Galbadia? Hm. Perhaps. Or maybe Balamb? Are you a Guardian Force-user?"

"How are we killing this guy?" Seifer cut in, and Nicholai paused, before nodding. He'd made enough progress in figuring out what his young accomplice really was, and if he was a SeeD, he was to be respected very highly.

"Pincher attack," Nicholai explained. "We park outside his house, I go in the front, you go in the back. Sweep and clear. Quick, clean, efficient. Just what people like us do best."

"I can handle that," Seifer replied, nodding. He reached into his coat and took out his handgun. He quickly checked it, removed the magazine and peeked into the clip to make sure everything was secure, and reloaded it. As he did so, the ex-cadet had a sudden, dangerous thought.

"Witnesses?' Seifer asked after a second, and Nicholai shrugged.

"If we do our job right, we'll be in and out before anyone sees us," he replied. "As for witnesses inside the house . . . If they see us, they don't get to talk. Understand?" Seifer frowned, but nodded. It wasn't like some piece of shit dealer like this was going to have a litter of orphans in his house . . . .

* * *

"You know what?" asked the man in the passenger seat of the nondescript two-door coup parked down the street. The man behind the driver's wheel groaned, then took a bite of his burger. 

_I hate stakeouts._

"I hate stakeouts," continued the man, scratching the back of his head and the short black hair that covered it, closely cut but just an inch beyond shaved. He glanced at his partner, and reached over for a curly fry from the bag between their seats. The driver, armed with a full head of brown hair that was a few inches beyond regulation length, shrugged as he swallowed.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Tobias," grunted the brown-haired cop. Detective Tobias Anton, the younger of the two GCPD detectives, nodded.

"Its just . . . You know. We both know the guys are guilty. Why can't we just kick in the door and arrest 'em all? Come on, Marty, don't you think it would be faster?" Detective Martin Branagh grunted again, shaking his head.

"Can't say I wouldn't want to," he admitted. "But rules are rules, and we can't change them. Ever since Caraway took over, we're on a tight leash, man."

"Yeah, and it sucks!" replied Tobias, waving a hand in the air dismissively. "Used to be, we could just bust down these jackasses' doors and haul 'em off. But now we need warrants, and evidence, and just cause . . . ."

"You saying you liked it when Deling was in charge?" Martin asked, and Tobias shrugged.

"Hey, our job was easier, Marty, can't deny that."

"I'm not," replied the older detective. "But with Deling, things were pretty bad. He didn't trust anyone, even his own army . . . ."

"Yeah, we were under a lot of scrutiny, but we didn't have to put up with all this bullshit," Tobias answered, crossing his arms. "Its just - hey."

Martin looked up out the windshield of his car, toward the house they were watching, and spotted a black four-door sedan pull up outside the house. The cop's instincts started firing off, and he glanced at his partner, who was leaning forward in his seat, picking up a video camera off the dashboard and pointing it at the scene. As they watched, two men got out of the car, both in black jackets - one with dark hair, sunglasses, and a beard, the other with a shaved head and a blonde goatee. Both men were slipping latex gloves onto their hands. The two spoke for a moment, the dark-haired man pointing around the side of the little townhouse that the two detectives were watching, and the blonde man nodded. They stepped away from the car, and in the blonde man's right hand was -

"They're armed," Tobias muttered. "What do you think? Pro hitmen?"

"Definitely," Martin replied. "Shit. We've been following this guy for weeks. Watch them, I'll call for backup. See if you can ID either of them."

"Gotcha, Marty," Tobias replied as his partner got on the radio with the dispatcher.

* * *

"Circle around behind the garage, enter through the back door," Nicholai said as they finished putting their gloves on. Seifer put a tiny radio transmitter into his ear as he finished. "You should have a straight shot into the living room. I'll go in the front." 

"What about the garage?" Seifer asked.

"We'll know if they try and run out that way," Nicholai replied. "They won't be able to get out before we take them down."

"You're pretty confident," Seifer replied, and Nicholai shrugged.

"Maybe you should be more yourself," the Trabian replied, and Seifer paused, before chuckling to himself.

_Back in the day, that _was_ my weapon of choice . . . ._

"Okay," Seifer replied, nodding. "Let's get this over with." The ex-cadet moved away from the sedan, crouching low to the ground and raising his pistol, finger off the trigger. It felt strange to be doing this in the middle of the day, but around these parts, the sunlight was almost an ally for the stealthy-minded. The former cadet slipped around behind the garage, low to the ground, his shoes swishing through the grass lawn as he moved around behind the house. He stepped into a sparse back yard, marked by a concrete patio and a large pool. He moved up toward the back door, and after a quick check, he confirmed there were no alarms on the entryway.

_Time for those covert entry classes to pay off . . . ._

The ex-cadet holstered his pistol and reached into his pocket, taking out a set of lockpicks. Very quietly, he inserted them into the back door's lock and started moving them. He listened intently as the mechanisms inside the lock turned and moved, and delicately manipulated the picks to move the tumblers inside. After a few seconds, the lock quietly clicked, and Seifer withdrew his picks and slowly opened the door. He drew his pistol as the door opened, and swept the first room he entered, a kitchen. No hostiles were present; good.

He could hear voices coming from the next room, which had to be the living room. As the ex-cadet slipped forward, crouching low to the linoleum floor, he edged toward the doorway, slowly setting his feet down balls first, advancing in a ghostly silent crouch-walk. He reached the door, pistol gripped tightly in his hand, and listened.

In the next room, he could hear at least three men talking quietly, their voices barely audible of the ecstatic groans of a woman. That, combined with the steady bass music playing in the room told Seifer exactly what they were watching, and he grinned tightly. They wouldn't be paying attention, that was for certain.

Seifer waited several more seconds to make sure Nicholai was in position. He edged up to the doorway and peeked into the living room, and quickly withdrew his head. He needn't have bothered; the four men in the room, one of whom was their target, were very much engrossed with their scandalous video, and weren't paying any attention to their surroundings.

_Click_.

The radio in his ear clicked, indicating Nicholai was in position. Seifer tapped his ear twice, sending a confirmation, and then rose. He stepped forward, into the room, pistol up and ready.

Nicholai was in the room as well, a pair of silenced pistols in his hands. None of the four men in the room noticed them in the first second of their appearance, but as they looked up, three pistols swept over their spots on the couches and chairs.

Two solid seconds of rapid, successive _pfft-pffts_ filled the air as the two assassins caught their victims in a deadly crossfire. No less than five rounds were fired into each man, bullets punching into their torsos and blasting into their heads. The men never even had a chance to scream or cry out in pain. Nicholai and Seifer then moved into the room, putting a pair of extra rounds into each man's head to make sure they were completely dead, as per established anti-terrorist training both men had taken.

_Ironic,_ Seifer mused as he blasted a pair of rounds into a corpse's temple. _Anti-terror tactics used against common criminals. Cid would be furious right now . . . ._

Seifer honestly didn't care what Old Man Kramer would have thought as he and Nicholai quickly scooped up the brass casings littering the floor. Their deed done, the pair of hitmen rushed outside toward Nicholai's waiting sedan. The slammed the car doors, and the Trabian agent started the car's engine.

"Too easy," Seifer muttered, and the Trabian glanced at him, as if he'd just insulted his mother.

"Never," he hissed in all seriousness, "_ever_ say that on a hit. Ever."

"Why no-" Seifer began, but was cut off by the wailing of sirens, and a pair of GCPD police cruisers, marked in the black and blue colors of the city's police department, rounded the corner.

"Oh, _son of a-"_

"What did I say? Dammit, hold on!"

Nicholai sent the car into reverse, and spun the wheel as Seifer threw on his seatbelt. The latch clicked as Nicholai stopped the spin, turning around one hundred and eighty degrees to their original direction, and jammed the gas.

"Where the hell did they come from?" Seifer shouted over squealing tires as Nicholai's sedan shot ahead, rounding a corner that sent the ex-cadet against his restraints.

"Someone saw us," Nicholai replied, shaking his head. "No idea who, or when, but they saw us fast, and-"

They drove toward an intersection, and two police motorcycles shot out ahead of them, the drivers swerving toward the pair of mafia enforcers. Seifer cursed as they passed the bikers, who swung around behind them and gunned their engines, rapidly closing with the retreating sedan. One of them, one hand on the handlebars of his bike, drew a handgun and fired a shot at the back of the car. The round pinged off the metal body loudly, just above the rear passenger tire.

"Shit! They're aiming for our tires!" Seifer growled. He hit the window button, lowering the window, and leaned out the passenger side window. Wind blasted against his face as he twisted toward the cop, who was bringing his pistol up toward Seifer's exposed body.

The morality of Seifer's next act never crossed his mind until much later. His right hand rose, the barrel of his pistol aimed at the motorcycle cop, and he fired, instantly, without hesitation. The barrel kicked, and the round smashed into the cop's jaw.

The cop fired at that same instant, and a splash of blood and white-hot pain shot through Seifer's left shoulder, and he ducked back into the car. Behind him, the cop fell back off his bike, the motorcycle toppling over and spinning across the pavement, the dead or critically wounded cop's body bouncing across the road.

"You okay?" Nicholai asked, and before Seifer could respond, the Trabian sent his car to the left in a quick jerk. There as a shock of an impact, the entire vehicle shuddering, and in the rear-view mirror, the other motorcycle cop was shoved off the side of the road and into a mailbox. Man, motorcycle, and mail went flying in various directions as the two police cars from moments before emerged and sped toward them in pursuit.

"I'll live," Seifer grunted as he reached inside of himself, focused, and cast the soothing power of a curative spell into his shoulder. The wound began to close, the bullet inside pushed out and plopping onto the seat next to the ex-cadet.

"Good," Nicholai grunted. "We can't let this go on. Look in the back seat, kid. The longer we run, the more likely they'll pull a police helicopter out after us, and if that happens, we're FUBAR."

"Oh, we're already FUBAR," Seifer replied with a chuckle as he turned around, and saw in the rear passenger seat a long case. He reached down and grabbed it, flicking the latches.

"Not yet," answered Nicholai. "I'd say we're TARFU right now."

"Maybe a FUBB," replied Seifer as he hefted the assault rifle inside the case. He quietly whistled. "What's this? A G36?" he looked over the long, dark gray assault rifle, complete with optical sights, optical rail, and a pre-loaded drum magazine of one hundred bullets.

"Galbadian Special Forces weapon," answered Nicholai. "I only use the best." He swerved to the left, throwing Seifer around as he tried to move back into the passenger seat.

"But today, kid, you get to use it," he explained. "We need to lose those fools in the cars behind us before they can call in a chopper."

"Gotcha," Seifer replied, pulling back the action of the rifle, loading a round into the chamber. "Got anyplace safe we can run to?"

"In a moment, I will," Nicholai replied as he pulled out a cell phone with his left hand, right hand on the steering wheel. He hit a button as Seifer leaned out the window, raised his new toy, and sighted the cars behind him. As the ex-cadet did so, Nicholai began speaking in Trabian over the phone, his volume shooting up as the thunderous retort of automatic rifle fire filled the peaceful Galbadia City daytime air.

* * *

"We have two officers down, repeat, two officers down at Winchester and Blue Creek," Detective Branagh shouted over the radio as he drove his car around the corner. Ahead of him, a pair of police cruisers could be seen in pursuit of the fleeing assassins. Beside him, Tobias had unlocked the shotgun in the case in the back of the sedan and was pumping it, loading a shell into the chamber. 

"_Unit 2257 in pursuit, shots fired."_

"_Unit 2261 also in pursuit, confirming shots fired. Weapons free."_

Detective Martin Branagh grimaced as he heard the clipped tones of the soldiers in the cruisers ahead of him. Unlike the detectives that were right behind them, the two cruisers were actually repainted patrol cars belonging to Asp, the mercenaries who were supplementing the GCPD. While they were on contract with the Galbadian municipal authorities, their orders and structure were far more military than the city police department, and as such they were far more liberal on their use of force. Their contract stated that Asp troops had to announce when they went "weapons free" during any incident, but beyond that there were few restrictions to their ability to employ weapons in the field when threatened.

"At least their patrol cars don't have rocket launchers," he muttered under his breath.

"Hey, I could use one right now," chuckled Tobias as he rolled down his window. "Get me closer. I'm gonna paste those bastards."

The two Asp cruisers ahead of them closed in with the fleeing sedan, the passenger of the rightmost cruiser emerging and leveling his M4 rifle at the fleeing vehicle. As they closed, the sedan's passenger emerged from his window, holding a-

"Holy shit that's a G36!" Tobias shouted as the kid leveled his rifle at the cruiser on the right.

* * *

The passenger in the cruiser was leveling a rifle at Seifer, but as he sighted the man, the ex-cadet saw the soldier's uniform. He wore the ash and black camo of an Asp mercenary, not the uniform of a cop, and whatever tiny feelings of guilt he would have otherwise felt were blasted out the barrel of his rifle and drilled three large holes in the mercenary's flak jacket, ripping out the backside of his uniform. The man, and his rifle, tumbled out of the car and across the pavement. The ex-cadet traversed his weapon, leveling it at the driver of the mercenary cruiser, and depressed the trigger twice. The weapon kicked with two rapid bursts, drilling six bullets into the windshield over the driver's position. Seifer couldn't tell if he hit his target, but the car swerved wildly out of control and slammed through a wooden fence, and that was good enough for him. 

Seifer turned and leveled his rifle at the second mercenary cruiser, resting his rear on the window well of the passenger door, and sighted the car. The passenger was raising his rifle as well, and fired a burst at Seifer, bullets slamming and skittering across the roof of the sedan. Seifer's retort was much more accurate; five bullets drilled into the man, blasting into his torso and throat, and as he fell out of his car, the cruiser swerved away. The driver was a mercenary, after all, and not getting paid to die today.

However, a third car was closing in on them, not painted like a police cruiser. However, the man leaning out the passenger window, and the shotgun he was holding made him either an undercover cop or one very well-armed and community-oriented citizen. Either way, he was someone Seifer didn't want to shoot at quite as much.

The cadet lowered his rifle at the hood of the car as the cop pointed his shotgun as him. The ex-Knight pulled the rigger on his rifle and held it down, spraying automatic fire into the coupe's engine block. The driver swung the wheel, pulling aside, and Seifer kept on firing, edging shots in the general direction of the black-haired cop with the shotgun. The shotgun-wielder fired one blast, scoring the back of Nicholai's car, before the driver pulled his car too far away to continue firing. Black smoke erupted from the blasted coupe's engine block as Nicholai went around a corner and passed out of view.

"Get back inside!" called the Trabian, tugging on Seifer's coat, and he did so, sitting down and rolling up the window, trying futilely to slow his pulse and his breathing.

_Gunfights, car chases, mercenaries. Never gets old, does it, Seifer?_

_No, especially when you're shooting cops, or killing children, or dropping monsters on cities. Doing it all over again, Seifer. Killing good people for your own pointless, selfish purposes. Letting people die for getting near you, for even interacting with you, while the monsters get away from it all._

"There is a safehouse a few blocks away," Nicholai explained. "We'll park in the garage there and go our split up."

"Right," Seifer replied, nodding. He slowly moved his thumb forward, safing the rifle and setting it down. He looked down at his fingers, and his hands, which trembled slightly. Nicholai noted the motions as he drove, and was silent for a moment as the ex-cadet realized what he had been doing in the heat of the moment.

"You never shot at police before," the Trabian remarked. Seifer didn't answer, instead only looking numbly up out the passenger window. "Don't worry. You get used to it."

_I don't want to get used to it._

Seifer didn't speak as Nicholai parked the car in a garage a few moments later, with several Anarak crewmembers looking the ravaged vehicle over. Seifer slowly got out, shaking his head.

"You did good today," Nicholai explained distantly, and he handed Seifer a wad of cash. The ex-cadet took the money numbly, not counting it, and managing a bare nod as he left the safehouse and flagged down a taxi.

_Doing it again, Seifer. You're just like you were back then. Back with Ultimecia. A selfish little boy who cared only for himself and letting everyone else around him burn for his own ambitions._

A half hour later, he was sitting next to Fujin's unconscious body, in the hospital bed, string at her face, and the merciless mental beating continued unabated. He stared at her still features, at her slow breathing, and reached forward, touching her hand.

"Have I changed, Fuu?" he asked the empty air and silent, motionless body before him. "Am I any different now? I killed a police officer today. I shot him without any hesitation or remorse. What does that say about me?" He closed his eyes, and settled back into his chair, rubbing his eye sockets with his fists.

_I don't think I can ever be forgiven for what I've done, Fuu. And really, I don't think I _want _to be forgiven._

As that thought echoed in his head, a subtle vibration filled his coat pocket. The ex-Knight looked down at his chest, and reached into his pocket, withdrawing the cell phone he carried. He didn't call many people, and no one had his number . . . So who was calling him?

Seifer opened the phone and hit the "talk" button.

"Yeah?"

"_Seifer! You didn't forget about me, did you?" _The ex-cadet stiffened at the voice being spoken, and he cursed under his breath_. "Listen up, _bitch. _I've got a job for you . . . ."_

* * *

-

* * *

Notable notes: FUBB, TARFU, and FUBAR are acronyms for various states during an operation. Translated, they mean "Fucked Up Beyond Belief," "Things Are Really Fucked Up," and "Fucked Up beyond All Repair."

The G36 Seifer uses is a real rifle, asare the M4 carbines used by the poor Asp mercenaries who get splattered. Google Imagethem or look them up on Wikipedia for more info.

Also, I have come up with an idea for a Centran accent and language, though what exactly said language is I'm keeping a secret...

Until next chapter...


	4. Third Job: Fear

Nicholai casually drew his cell phone out of his trenchcoat as the blonde kid walked outside and flagged down a taxi. The Trabian observed the young man carefully, noting his shell-shocked expression, as if what he had just gone through had traumatized him deeply.

"Ivan," grunted the Trabian as he watched his young partner drive away in a cab.

"_Da?"_ came the voice over the cell phone, one of Nicholai's contacts. The Trabian hesitated for a moment, thinking, and then spoke again.

"I need you to run a search on the bounty listings online," he began. "Look for bounties posted in the last one to six years, focused on blonde men in their early twenties with scars."

"_Right, right, just a moment. Running the search now."_ There was a moment's hesitation. _"Nicho, you, ah, want me to cross reference this? I've got fourteen thousand hits."_

"Yes," Nicholai replied, surprised that so many blonde men with scars in their twenties were on bounty lists. "Former membership within Garden or SeeD, with discharges, expulsions, or failures at the top."

"_Okay, a moment here . . . Ah. Good. Four hits. Transferring to your PDA now."_

"Thank you, Ivan," Nicholai replied, and hung up his cell phone. The Trabian enforcer took out his personal PDA and checked his inbox, and found the respective files immediately popping up with prompt efficiency. As he called for a driver to pick him up and take him back to the warehouse, he ran over the four files, frowning.

_No . . . no . . . no - wait . . . ._

Nicholai narrowed his eyes as he stared at the face on the screen, whose blonde hair and hairless chin and regal, cocky expression did not match the somber, goateed, and shaved head of his previous protégée. However, the notable scar between their eyes matched, and that was all he needed to know. Still, the name, and the huge bounty number attached next to said name surprised the enforcer.

"_Da, da,_" Nicholai whispered thoughtfully as his car arrived. "You are a very prudent man to hide your name, Mr. Almasy. To have you in our employ will be a great boon, I expect . . . ."

Nicholai slid the PDA into his coat pocket as his car pulled up, and he calmly got into the back seat, smiling beneath his thick beard.

* * *

_**Job Three: Fear**_

* * *

"You understand, bitch?" 

Seifer closed his eyes and shook his head, wondering how the hell he had gotten into this mess so easily, before answering.

"Yeah, I got it," he replied.

"Good," came Johnson's voice over the cell phone. "Be here in two hours, and be ready."

The line went dead, and Seifer turned off his cell phone, before settling back into his chair. He pocketed the phone and rubbed his temples, trying to figure out where to go from here.

_A simple delivery of contraband. That's it. Right. And I'm the Commander of Garden._

This was nothing like it sounded, for certain, and Seifer knew a set-up when it was paraded in front of his face. Still, he didn't have any choice in the matter. If the damn corrupt cop wanted him to run guns or drugs or whatever, then he'd have to do it. Especially with Fujin still so vulnerable like this.

He slowly rose, exhausted by all he'd been through already, and put on his jacket, ready to head back out into the underworld and hope he survived. Before he left, however, the ex-knight touched Fujin's hand again, and managed a slight smile.

"We'll get through this, Fuu," he whispered, though he didn't know if he was talking to her or to himself. After a couple of seconds, Seifer turned away and walked out of the room, ready to do whatever was necessary to keep her safe . . . For now.

Several moments after he left the room, the hand Seifer had touched moved slightly, and an eye cracked open for a whisper of an instant.

* * *

"You are _absolutely_ certain that its him," asked the man seated in the lawn chair behind Sergeant Johnson's house. The man was settled back into the chair like water in a sponge, both hands folded behind his head as he spoke. 

"Beyond a shadow of a doubt," replied Johnson as he flipped some burgers on his grill. The sizzling fires and fresh scent of cooking meat filled the air as the man in the lawn chair grinned.

"You saw him with your own two eyes. _Seifer Almasy_."

"Scars and all," Johnson replied, glancing to the main in his lawn chair. He was a large man, just over six feet in height, with wavy blonde hair just beyond three inches in length. Clad in a white jacket and black shirt over his lanky frame, he seemed larger than he really was, which itself was already a significant size. At his feet, beside his black pants and boots, was a sheathed katana, leaning idly against the lawn chair and next to his crossed legs.

"So, he's really back, then," muttered the blonde man, chuckling. "Wonderful. Always wanted to meet this guy. This Seifer who boned half the planet in his little bid of insanity. Gotta admire a man that ambitious."

"A man like you, Bones?" asked Johnson, and the blonde man, who was indeed known as "Bones," grinned once more.

"That, and a man with as loose a grip on reality as me, too," Bones answered. "Though I wonder how tough he really is. Heard he got his hand cut off and cauterized it himself. That's saying something."

"He doesn't have quite your special 'talents,' though," Johnson remarked as he sniffed the air over his burgers. "Mm-mmm! Smell that cooking. Put some barbeque sauce in with those. Say what you will about me, but I do cook a mean quarter-pounder."

"Well, he may not have anything quite as overt as me, answered Bones with a shrug, "but the guy has his own talents. He's the best fighter to come out of Garden, except that Leonhart guy. But only barely. Really, this Seifer is something. When is he supposed to get here, anyway?"

"Two minutes ago, actually," Johnson remarked, checking his watch. He glanced up and around, and nodded as he heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway of his little townhouse. The engine cut off, and a few moments later, Seifer rounded the side of the corrupt officer's house. Johnson closed the top of his grill and put down his spatula as he caught sight of the ex-knight.

"And here he is," stated to officer. "Almost perfectly on time, too. Good. Having a good day today, bitch?"

Seifer didn't answer, instead crossing his arms.

"Where's the package?" he asked bluntly, and Johnson nodded, pointing at Seifer.

"Now that, I like. To the point. Okay. There's a little gas station thee blocks down the street that way." Johnson pointed over Seifer's shoulder. "There's a motorcycle there with a duffel bag. You get that bag to 724 Warren and drop it in the alley. Make sure no one follows you, and make damn sure the bag gets where I want it to go. And you damn well better not look inside that bag, either, understand?" Seifer nodded in response, and Johnson frowned. He walked toward Seifer and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

"I said do you understand me, _bitch?"_ he growled, and shoved Seifer backward. The ex-knight kept his footing, grunting as he was pushed away.

"Yeah, I understand," he answered quietly, and visions of capping Johnson in the face filled his mind at that point. He almost, _almost_ pulled his pistol, but kept his emotions barely under control. Johnson turned and walked toward his grill, opening it again. As he moved out of the way, Seifer caught sight of the man seated in the lawn chair beyond, and met the man's steel-gray eyes. The figure made a smirk and raised his eyebrows, and a sudden, unexpected chill shot down Seifer's spine as he looked at the man.

_He was familiar._

Seifer didn't know this man, and couldn't place who he was, but he was familiar, like a presence in the back of his mind that he couldn't pin down.

"Oh, you two haven't met," Johnson added as he flipped his burgers again. "Seifer, meet Bones. Bones, Seifer. Bones is an . . . associate of mine. Part of Asp, he's my liaison. Gotta have good friends in high places, right?"

"What am I going to expect out there?" Seifer asked. Johnson glanced up, cocking an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?" he asked, almost innocently.

"Who wants your package, and are they going to be shooting at me?" Seifer asked bluntly.

"To answer your second question," Bones suddenly cut in, speaking for the first time since Seifer's arrival, "Probably. The guys we're competing with really don't like us running things like this package around. They have an annoying tendency to shoot up all our couriers. Bad for business."

"Have you ever heard of the Hacikyuusan?" Johnson asked, and Seifer shook his head. "Nasty bunch, if you happen to be on their bad side."

"Estharian crime families," Bones added. "Started up way across the ocean. They're moving in on this continent, and they've got a bone to pick with all entrenched business. You see, they've got this honor code thing going on."

"No drugs," Johnson explained. "They don't like drugs at all, and that puts a damper on our business. Same thing with human trafficking. They're all for illegal weapons and theft, white-collar crime, gambling, semi-legitimate stuff, but they _really_ don't like our business. Now, you're going to be carrying something they don't like, and I really don't want these Estharian jackasses to destroy it, understand?"

"Right," Seifer replied, nodding.

"Good," Johnson said, going back to his food. He waved a hand dismissively at Seifer. "Go on, get out of here, bitch. I got food to cook, and you've got packages to deliver."

* * *

"Marty, you okay?" Tobias asked as he helped his partner into his car at the precinct. The older detective grunted, rubbing his forehead, and Tobias circled around and climbed into the driver's seat. 

"My wife is going to kill me when she sees what happened to the car," Detective Branagh muttered, and Tobias chuckled as he started the engine.

"Hey, its not your fault," he offered his partner. "On the bright side, we should be lucky we're alive. That asshole with the assault rifle nearly killed both of us."

"Oh, she wouldn't have cared. Me and the car are both insured," Marty replied as his partner pulled out of the parking lot an onto the city streets. "Jeez, its still the middle of the day, she won't even be awake."

"That's going to be a nasty wake-up call," Tobias said with a shake of his head. "Hi, honey. I just got shot at by a dick with a machinegun and I totaled our car! When's breakfast?"

"If only it was that easy," Marty replied, shaking his head. "Come on, I need to get something to eat before I break the news to the wife, eh?"

"No arguing there," answered Tobias. "And man, I almost had that guy, too! A second longer and boom! Ten gauge in the face!"

"Yeah, yeah," Marty answered, rubbing his head again.

"And I tell you one thing, if we find that guy again, I'm not missing a second time. I don't care what Internal Affairs says, he'll be armed and dangerous on the reports after I blast him. Asshole killedfour cops."

"Three mercs, one cop," replied Marty, and Tobias shrugged.

"Same thing, right now. Those Asp guys are on our side, they're cops all the same. And if I find that bastard, I'm going to make him pay, hear me?"

"Loud and clear, partner, loud and clear."

* * *

_He may be an asshole, but he gave me a decent bike._

The sleek black motorcycle parked behind the gas station was exactly where Johnson had said it would be, and hidden behind it was a duffel bag, already filled with illicit contraband. Seifer wordlessly picked up the bag, secured it to the back of the motorcycle, and gunned the bike's engine. He rolled out from behind the gas station and into the day-lit city streets.

The roar of passing air and the growl of his bike were the only sounds for the first twenty minutes as the ex-knight weaved his bike through the relatively empty city streets. It was getting to be the middle of the afternoon, and that meant that it was the equivalent of the earliest morning hours for this town.

Seifer pulled up to an intersection in a light residential district, and glanced both ways like a good driver before turning to the right. For his trouble, he got a dozen bullets ripping through the air past him, one slamming into the back end of his bike, barely missing the duffel bag. The cracking reports from the firing weapon - _machine pistol shit-_ were just registering in his mind when the ex-knight gunned his engine and shot ahead like a branded bronco, blasting across the intersection and swerving to the right. He yanked back on the accelerator and shot down the street as the roar of a dozen other motorcycle engines filled the air around him.

_Ambush! Gotta shake these guys, now!_

Seifer spared an instant to look behind him, and saw four motorcycles pursuing directly behind him. The men on them were wearing black clothing, shirts and jackets, and sunglasses, and every one of them was sporting a machine pistol or handgun.

"Shit."

Seifer managed to breathe that curse out as all four men opened fire. Bullets split the air, the cracks of their fire blasting over engines as Seifer swerved left and then right, juking their gunfire as he drew his pistol with his left hand. He cursed again as he swerved down a side street, hopping the curve and blazing over sidewalk. Bullets continued to chase him as he drove, and the enemy chased him around the corner and over the curb as well. Seifer swerved as best he could, looking for a way to shake off his pursuers. His mind raced as he sped up and tried to search his surroundings for a way to escape, and somewhere in there, he had the presence of mind to fire his pistol over his shoulder. Not that there was much of a chance of him hitting the pavement, much less his pursuers, but even the threat of one's quarry fighting back was enough to give most attackers pause.

Unfortunately, it gave these enemies no pause, and they continued firing. Fortunately, their shots were just as wild and inaccurate as Seifer's; at their current speed they would be lucky to get anywhere near each other.

Seifer cut left as an intersection approached, and nearly ate a sport utility vehicle in the middle of the road for his troubles. His handlebars jerked instantly, and he drove around it. The gunfire behind him slackened as he passed the vehicle, and that momentary hesitation sent his mind spinning in a new direction.

_They don't want to harm bystanders._

Seifer remembered what Johnson had said, about the Hacikyuusan gangs and their moral codes, and he realized who was chasing him. Of course, that didn't make it any easier for Seifer at that moment; honorable criminals with guns chasing him and trying to gun him down were still criminals with guns chasing him and trying to gun him down.

Seifer hopped up onto the curb with his bike as the enemy chased him, trying to keep parked cars along the road between him and his opponents. It worked well, for a couple of seconds, and enemy gunfire slackened, until one of the bikers joined Seifer on the sidewalk.

The ex-knight then took a calculated risk - something with a lot more calculation than normal for Seifer Almasy. He turned in his seat, looked over his shoulder, and aimed at his opponent. He tapped the brakes, slowing down and letting his surprised foe close in, making the gangster a larger target. His sights fell over the bike and its rider, and Seifer fired several times, the gun kicking in his hand and the weapon's report filling his ears.

He wasn't sure which bullet killed the enemy behind him. All he knew was that the biker fell backward, and his vehicle skidded out of control and started skipping across the sidewalk directly at Seifer. The ex-knight threw his own bike sideways, off the sidewalk - barely missing a mailbox as he did so - and back onto the road.

The other bikers had not wasted any time, either, and had pulled up alongside Seifer as he slowed down. They leveled their weapons at him, and he did the last thing any sane person would do: he dove in closer, right alongside one biker as he fired. The bullets ripped wildly past Seifer, most of them missing him, but a pair slammed into his shoulder, and blood burst from his upper arm. The flash of pain was rapidly banished as Seifer retorted, thrusting his pistol into the biker's neck as their motorcycles came side-by-side, and he depressed the trigger.

The splatter of blood into Seifer's face was a bit larger than he anticipated as he swerved away from the dropping motorcycle.

More gunfire scythed in at the ex-knight, and he tapped the brakes again, dropping behind the other two Estharian gangsters. He fired his pistol at them as they drove ahead, his rounds flying wildly. They swerved and juked, dodging his gunfire, and the pistol clicked empty as they leveled machine pistols at him. Once more, Seifer sideslipped onto the sidewalk, between two cars, and used them for cover. Bullets flew past him, skipping off cars and through mailboxes. The enemy slowed down, to which Seifer replied by accelerating past them. The dropped behind him, and he tapped the magazine release for his weapon with his thumb. The clip fell out of the weapon, and he gripped the top of the handgun by his teeth as he dug a fresh magazine out of his coat with his free hand. He slid the clip partially into the weapon as his foes continued firing, and then grabbed the handgun with his free hand. He slapped it against his thigh, pushing the magazine all the way into the weapon with a satisfying, if barely audible, _click_.

His bike leapt back into the street as his foes' weapons ran dry, and he swerved into their path, firing as he did so. One of the bikers jerked and fell backwards off his bike, and the other sped up, dropping his weapon and grabbing at something inside his jacket, what looked like a melee weapon - a knife or sword, Seifer couldn't tell.

Seifer wasn't about to let that happen, and tapped the brake, shooting backward toward his foe. His left foot shot up as they closed, and slammed the Estharian in the chest as they neared, throwing him from his bike and sending the motorcycle clattering across the pavement. Not hesitating, Seifer pulled hard on the accelerator, and he shot down the street, away from the fallen Estharian and any other reinforcements they were calling in. He barreled toward and intersection and made to turn-

A four-door car shot in front of him, an the driver and all three passengers had sub-machineguns leveled at him and happily began blasting away at the ex-knight.

"Oh, _fuck me._"

Desperation seized him, and the bike juked around behind the car as all the enemy bullets flew around him, some cutting past his jacket. By some insane miracle, none of them hit him, but the enemy tracked him as the driver turned his car in pursuit. Gunfire filled the air, and Seifer gritted his teeth as more bullets then any man had any right to have shot at him tore past. Chunks of asphalt filled the air as the gunners blasted away, and the barrage only stopped when magazines ran dry and the gangsters took a second to reload.

Seifer did not have time to shake these guys, and if he tried to drive away, they'd continue firing anyway. And as atrocious as their aim was at these less-than-sane speeds, they'd hit him or his bike eventually. Thus, Seifer had to end this, and fast. He only had one option, and he had to use it _now,_ before they were done reloading

The car continued to chase him, and he gripped the handlebars tightly. He held his breath, and clutched the brakes, _hard._ At the same moment, he jerked his handlebars around in a motion that was best not tried at home. The bike stopped in place, but its forward momentum kept it moving, and Seifer's jerk sent the back end spinning around, and brought him to face his opponent. He raised his left hand, tossed his pistol into the air, and loosed a stream of magical lightning. The bolt slammed into the front of the car, sending raging arcs of electricity over the length of the vehicle and blinding the driver momentarily. The car shot toward Seifer, and then past him on his left, and the pistol he had tossed dropped back into his hand. Without missing a beat, he aimed at the passing car, and the pistol barked.

One bullet slammed into the side of the car. Another hit a window and cracked the glass. The third and final round hit the back driver side tire, blowing it out.

The driver, still blinded, now lost control of his car. It sideslipped wildly across the road, jumped the curb, and flipped over, hurtling through the air over a home's little white fence, across the manicured green lawn, and straight into the living room of some poor bastard's two-story townhouse.

Seifer winced, and did not stick around to observe the aftermath. His engine roared, and he drove out of sight of the ugly crash in moments, and was not shot at any more by angry Estharian gangsters. This was, naturally, a plus in Seifer's estimation as he hurried to finish this damn job without getting killed.

* * *

Perhaps it was fate, but as Tobias was driving Marty home, the two detective caught a dispatch on the rather loud and entirely public gunfight happening in Galbadia City's residential districts. Neither detective really _wanted_ to get involved, but neither man hesitated. Martin grabbed his sidearm, a .45 magnum revolver, as Tobias immediately changed direction to the site of the running vehicle chase. 

"This shit is really pissing me off," Tobias snarled as he drove down the street toward the incident. "These assholes are tearing this city apart! If I catch any of these guys, I just know I'm going to get sued for police brutality, and I'll be damn proud of it, too!"

"Maybe then I'll get a partner with some degree of sanity," muttered Marty, and Tobias chuckled.

"If I'm crazy, the whole city is too," he replied. "I swear, all the cops need to think like me and we'll have this whole town - _fucking onions_!"

A motorcycle shot past the intersection in front of them and turned past the two officers, and Tobias slammed his horn. Marty, meanwhile, stared at the man on the motorcycle, his eyes widening in recognition..

"Who the fuck is this jackass? If we didn't have anything better to-"

"Toby!" Marty said quickly. "Will you shut up an pay attention!" Tobias looked to Marty,a nd then back at the driver, and a half-second later his car shot ahead as he jammed the gas pedal down, recognizing the motorcycle rider's clothes and shaved head. Marty, meanwhile slapped the car's siren, and the driver looked back toward them. The man's mouth moved as his eyes widened in disbelieving shock.

* * *

"_-of a bitch!"_

It was the _same two cops_ from that morning in the car behind him, and Seifer could clearly see the almost manic glee on the driver's face as he shot after the ex-knight.

_Some crazy cosmic asshole out there is laughing at me. I know it._

Perhaps the cosmic author was laughing at that moment, but it was irrelevant, as Seifer shot ahead down the street, tearing up asphalt as detective Tobias gave chase, fully intent on running the e-knight down under the wheels of his car, and Detective Branagh leaned out the window of the car, firing his magnum at the fleeing criminal. Seifer juked once more, dodging gunfire, and swerved off to the right, along a road leading toward Galbadia City's run down and abandoned Auburn District.

Houses gave way to ramshackle buildings and apartments as Seifer drove on,t he sirens of the police car chasing him no matter how many times he swerved and turned. The air was occasionally split by the roar of Martin Branagh's heavy revolver, the rounds coming far too close for comfort. However bad shots the Hachikyuusan goons were, the detective was well beyond their skill.

Seifer swerved around a corner, and came into sight of a large three-story building dead ahead, an old, disused and abandoned hospital rising up ahead of him. Old bricks and rotted wood and stained glass dominated the structure as Seifer raced toward it.

At that moment something, instinct perhaps, struck the ex-knight, and he turned straight into the hospital's parking lot without even really thinking. A fleeting thought of losing the pursuing police officers inside hit him, and the criminal capitalized on the idea, despite it not being a particularly good one at that point. Seifer Almay was not the type to think about rationality, anyway.

Even as Branagh and Tobias rounded the corner, they spotted Seifer's bike in the parking lot, lying on its side as he jumped off, and caught the barest glimpse of him ducking through the double doors leading into the old hospital's emergency room entrance. Without missing a beat, they pulled up alongside the bike, killed the sirens, and stepped out, weapons ready.

"Let's get this bastard," growled Tobias, and Branagh nodded. Without another word, they rushed into the hospital's entrance.

* * *

"This may not have been the brightest idea," Seifer whispered to himself as he moved down the hallway, pistol drawn. The Auburn District had been abandoned several years ago, well before his reign as the leader of Galbadia, and while the area was still connected to the city's power grid, the hospital was dark and dim. Away from the windows, there was no illumination, and only darkness and dust dominated. 

Seifer's footfalls filled the hallway as he hurried down the corridor, trying to avoid the police chasing him. His boots hit the white tile floor, causing dust to rise and fall in little clouds in the shadows. He tried navigating down the hallway, but the darkness was thick around him, oppressive and stagnant, and he finally took out a small penlight and flicked it on. A small shaft of light stabbed into the darkness, and the ex-knight continued down the hallway quickly. The shaft of light danced across the empty hallway, over the tile floors and walls, antiseptic and lifeless.

Several moments later, he paused, thinking he heard something audible in the distance. He didn't know exactly what he'd heard, but it was most likely the cops. He needed to shake them, and quick, but he didn't know the terrain at all, and had no idea what the layout of this hospital was like.

_No. Not a good idea at all._

Nothing he could do about it now except to shake the cops as they pursued. He continued down the hall, listening for any indication they were near, and keeping his eyes open and weapon ready. He didn't want to shoot them, but he also didn't want to be shot, and firing a bullet or two would go a long way toward keeping his pursuers off his back.

With the exception of his footfalls, there was no sound inside the hospital as he advanced down the corridor. He stopped at a couple of doors and peeked inside, and found holding or operating rooms, devoid of anything useful. Further down the passage was a larger room, a waiting area, with a receptionist's desk and several branching hallways behind that. He checked behind the dusty desk, but again found little of interest beyond a very old mug caked in dust, and some old papers someone never bothered taking with them when the hospital closed.

A breeze of air touched his face as he stood up from behind the desk, and he thought he heard a voice down the hallway. Seifer tensed, pistol in hand, and looked around for a moment, his hands clenching the weapon tightly. No police revealed themselves, however, and he quickly decided to not let them. The ex-knight turned, picked a corridor at random, and hurried up the passage.

The hallway ended a few moments later at a stairwell and elevator. He didn't bother with the elevator, and instead hurried up the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible. He didn't have any aim or direction; he was just trying to evade his pursuers, and his gut told him to go up. Thus, up he went.

* * *

"This place is creepy," Tobias whispered as they moved down the hallway. Branagh nodded as they passed through a door, his eyes on the floor and following the disturbed path of dust below. The route lead through the corridors toward a reception area, which the escaping crook had apparently milled around in. they swept the area and found it clear. Tobias checked the hallways leading off, but found several possible directions the man could have taken; worse, the floors were now carpet, killing any chance of tracking by footprint. After a second, the younger detective pulled out his radio. 

"I'll sweep the upper floors," he suggested, and Branagh nodded.

"I'll check down here, see if he tried to give us the slip. Radio me if you find anything." Tobias nodded, and headed for the stairwell. He peeked inside, looked up, and started moving up the stairs, while his partner finished checking below.

* * *

Seifer stepped out into a corridor on the third floor. He glanced around the interior of the hallway, and then started forward. He moved along the passage, ears alert for any threat. His footsteps echoed faintly as the dust rose and fell behind him. 

He felt a breeze behind him, and spun, penlight arcing across the tile corridor. The small shaft of light danced across the room for a moment, and he saw nothing but dust moving faintly in the air, disturbed by his passage. After a second, Seifer realized he was holding his breath, and relaxed slightly. He turned and continued down the passage, convincing himself that he was alone.

The next room down the passage was an operating bay, and he stepped inside. The ex-knight glanced around the room, and paused, noting the operating table,. He stepped near it, his light flicking over it, and noted dark stains over the length of the table. He holstered his pistol and reached down, touching the stains and realized he was looking at dried blood.

_Weird. This hospital is older than Cid Kramer's toupee. This should have rotted away by now . . . And don't they cleanbloodup after operations anyway?_

Seifer's inspection of the table ended an instant later as he heard breathing behind him, and the click of a hammer being pulled back on a weapon.

"Freeze."

Seifer straightened, and closed his eyes, cursing under his breath.

"I said _freeze_." Seifer stood still for a moment, as ordered. He took a long breath, the musty scents from the ruined hospital filling his lungs as he stood there.

_Another cop. Not again. I don't want to kill another cop in the same damn _day

"Put your hands in the air, where I can see them," growled the officer, but Seifer did not move, instead silently weighing his options.

_I can survive a gunshot wound, no problem, but not multiple hits. If this guy has anything bigger than a pistol I'm screwed unless I use lethal force, and _dammit_ I'm not going to kill another cop._

"You got a fucking hearing problem, jackass?" shouted the cop, and Seifer sighed, before slowly raising his hands. It didn't matter; he was more than fast enough to get out of his line of fire and draw his own weapon, even with his hands up. He slowly turned around to face the officer, hands held up and high, and focused on the man's weapon.

_Beretta 92F. Standard police sidearm. I can take this guy._

His eyes moved up, focusing on the officer's face, and recognition struck the ex-cadet as he saw the man's black hair and features, those of the man he'd been shooting at less than a few hours ago. Obviously, the cop recognized him as well.

"Yeah, remember me? That was my partner's car you shot up earlier today."

"Is he okay?" Seifer asked, the words blurting out in a flash of guilt.

"Oh yeah, just fine," replied the furious cop, voice dripping in sarcasm. "Unlike Sergeant Lewis, who you _shot in the face._ Marty's wife is real happy you didn't kill him like Lewis. He's a real lucky guy, living through you waving that damn rifle around and blowing away eight people, four of them police. Yeah, he's just fine. Now get the _fuck_ on the floor before I pretend you're drawing a weapon."

Seifer's face twisted in anger as the officer continued speaking, guilt and hate at himself slowly building up as the policeman continued accusing him.

"And what the fuck do you know about me?" he snapped, ignoring the order to get down. "Do you think I _wanted_ to kill those men? You think if I had a choice I'd be killing cops and dealers for chump change?" His arms were lowering slightly, but not enough to be a threat. Still, his defiance, shouting, and the drooping arms were setting the already enraged cop further on edge.

"Shut the hell up and get your hands up before I blow your brains across the room!" he ordered. The weapon in his hands was trembling, and his trigger finger was starting to twitch a little bit.

"Dammit, do you think I want this? Want to be staring down your gun? No! No way _in fuck _do I want to be here! I don't want to kill you, I don't want to kill anyone else, I just want to get my friends, get the hell out of here and ten million miles away from everyone who has ever even heard my name!"

"I said shut up!" snarled the officer.

"So go ahead!" Seifer shouted, pointing a finger at the detective. "Shoot me, blow the hell out of my face, see if I give a shit right now! Do it! Come on, do it!"

"Shut! The fuck! Up!"

"Are you gonna do it?" snapped Seifer, and he lowered his hands, taking a step forward, glaring directly into the cop's eyes. "You gonna shoot me?"

The man's trigger finger moved, and Seifer spun, whirling out of the way, going for his pistol as he dropped into a couch. The bullet flew past him as he moved, and a line of searing agony shot along the right side of his face as the round cut past, blood flying out in its wake. Then Seifer was crouching, pistol drawn and rising up toward the cop, leveling it at his chest.

_No. Not again. Not another cop._

It was a split-second of hateful, guilt-stricken hesitation, but it was one that gave the cop all the time he needed to sight Seifer and fire a second shot.

_- no -_

That second shot never went off.

The cop stood there for a moment, staring at Seifer as the word echoed through both men's minds. Seifer blinked as something insubstantial drifted into his vision, something that seemed little more than a slightly more substantial bit of haze and dust billowing about the room. Whatever it was, the motion and the echo of a whispering voice made both men pause in place, not sure _what_ they were seeing.

_- no -_

The echoing voice came again, and with it a sudden rush of air, and a painful pressure inside both their minds, a brief, stabbing agony that caused both cop and criminal to grunt in pain, and then

_- go away -_

The cop stopped moving, blinking. Seifer stared at him for an instant, breathing stilled in the sudden moment of clarity. The cop looked to Seifer, his expression not comprehending, and then past him, slowly shifting to one of pain and fear and absolute _horror_. Seifer turned as weak, gasping wails of pain began issuing forth from the officer's mouth. The ex-cadet turned and lowered his eyes on what the officer had seen-

_-into a well of hellfire, blazing up behind him, framed around a blank visage of blood-red eyes and pale skin, dirty brown and blonde hair drooping in front of her face-_

The officer's gasps became a sudden wail of agony, and Seifer ripped his eyes away from the image behind him, to see the man fall backward, firing his weapon wildly. The blasting reports of semi-automatic handgun fire split the blazing air like an axe through rotten wood, as blood blasted outward from his hands and face.

"Hyne, it _burns_! Stop it, stop _her, I'm burning_!" he slapped his arms and face, crimson splattering about wildly, screaming and flailing, weapon firing indiscriminately. Seifer backed away, eyes wide and mouth gaping as the man's flesh began to boil away, his lifeblood fountaining from his throat and torso as if something was tearing it out. He stepped backward, and in the back of his mind, his instincts told him he was backing closer toward _it_, the _eyes,_ and then Seifer's left hand hit something, what felt like human flesh, the soft flesh of a young child's face, and he jerked, spinning around-

There was nothing. No fire, no screaming, no blood-red hellfire eyes, _nothing_. Seifer spun around again, raising his pistol, for whatever good it would do him, and looked down on the cop's body.

There was no body. His clothes lay on the floor, ripped and torn and seemingly burned in places, amidst a massive puddle of blood nearly twenty feet across. The faint _paps_ of dripping fluid filled the empty, dead air, as more crimson fluids fell from the ceiling, raining around the bleached bones that were all that remained of the police officer. The ex-cadet stared at the man's destroyed body for several long moments, unable to comprehend what he had just seen.

_That man's flesh was _boiled_ off. What the _fuck_. Get the holy fucking bejeebus out of this place, Seifer, right the hell _now.

* * *

Detective Branagh heard the screams, and his blood went cold as he recognized Tobias' voice, and his frantic cries of agony. Branagh turned and ran down the empty, darkened hallway, his flashlight dancing about wildly, and burst into a stairwell. Hardly slowing, he hurried up a flight of stairs to the next floor, from which head could hear Tobias' cries die out. 

"Oh, Hyne," he whispered as he burst onto the floor from where he'd heard Tobias' screams. He ran down an empty hallway, strewn with random debris, his flashlight dancing about wildly, and as he neared the end of the hallway, the door flew open. Branagh raised his revolver at the man who rushed out the door, his clothes dripping with blood, and recognized him even as he aimed.

"Freeze!" Branagh shouted, but the criminal they had chased down didn't stop, waving his hands in the air.

"Get the hell out of here!" he shouted, and his hands flew about wildly. Branagh saw a pistol in one of the man's hands, and reacted instinctively, pulling the trigger of his revolver. The criminal jerked back, grabbing is chest and grunting in agony as blood erupted from his chest. Branagh stared at him for a second as he fell back against a wall, and then started to shakily stand - _how the hell? That was a .45 to the damn _chest._ No one survives that._

"What the fuck are you doing?" the man growled as he grabbed his chest, glaring at Branagh in anger and pain. "Get out of here, before-"

Branagh was leveling his magnum at the man even as he spoke, but then looked past him, over his shoulder, at a flickering orange and red light.

_- hell -_

And then Detective Martin Branagh of the Galbadia City Police Department screamed as his skin lit up like napalm.

* * *

Seifer stared in horror as the second cop fell backward, screaming like he had been set alight, his magnum blasting into the ceiling as he thrashed about. Seifer caught a glimpse of his skin sloughing off around his eyes and blood erupting from his face, and then closed his eyes and leapt past the dying officer. Something warm touched his leg as he jumped over the man, and Seifer didn't want to know what it was, he just wanted _away._

He charged down the hallway, trying to block out the detective's screams as he died, his skin burning and melting off his bones. Over the cries of agony, he could hear the magnum firing again and again, the man pleading for the flames to go away.

The hallway ahead branched to the right, and Seifer turned in that direction toward waning daylight. His legs pumped, and his heart beat like machinegun fire as he caught sight of a window ahead.

He was three stories up, but Seifer didn't care. He was getting the hell out of here.

He charged toward the window, holstering his pistol as he ran, fear growing as he did so. He could almost feel the other presence in the hospital, closing in on him.

He neared the window and felt something touch him, brushing the back of his head, and a sudden flash of contact, a thought, a question, he wasn't sure, stabbed into his mind.

_- who? -_

Glass shattered against Seifer's forehead as he dove out the window and plummeted three stories to the pavement below. Boots crashed against asphalt a heartbeat later, and he rolled aside, panting in fear and sudden exhaustion. Pain welled up from his feet and legs, but he banished them as he rose and scrambled across the parking lot outside toward his bike.

He had leapt onto the bike and started the engine before he even realized that the presence was no more. But while his rational mind came to that realization, his body gunned the engine and steered him out of the parking lot and the hell away from that hospital.

In the distance, there were sirens as the backup the two dead officers had called started to arrive, but the motorcycle and its rider were long gone, racing across the city.

And as he fled, bloody red eyes followed him until he was out of sight.

* * *

-

* * *

Naturally, this chapter took a fairly wild shift; it went straight from car chases and gunfights to outright horror. This is intentional; while Ronin is intended to be a crime drama, it will tie in with a larger series of stories I'm planning on writing, and is in many ways an extended prologue to that story. Several of the elements introduced here, such as theBones characterand whatever the hell is happening in that hospital _will_ factor into the larger story. 

Also, the other gangI introduced in this chapter, the "Hachikyuusan," deserves some mention. Astute individuals who know their Japanese will know that the name literally translates into "Eightninethree" which is, in theolder Japanese languages, literally translated into"yakuza."So, yes, the Hachikyuusan gangs are very heavily based around theYakuza. Note also that the Hachikyuusan originates from Esthar, which will, in this series of stories, be very Oriental in some ways.These gangs will be very important later in Ronin, as well.

There is also a very large, distinct, and obvious reference in this chapter to a particular game. I'm not saying what game it is, but its very obvious to anyone who has played it, and may provide a large clue as to the nature of the plotline to come.

Until next chapter...


	5. Fourth Job: Silence

"How many?"

The speaker's tone was quiet and near emotionless, exuding grim seriousness as he evaluated the situation behind the dark sunglasses he wore. His black hair was not bothered in the slightest by the breeze passing over his head as he leaned against his expensive black sedan, a car whose color matched his outfit. Solid black pants, expensive black leather shoes, a high-quality black jacket fastened closed up to his neck, and jet black sunglasses on his face, which itself featured the faint tanning pigmentation of those of Estharian descent. His index finger tapped the back of his cell phone idly as he listened to his subordinate's report.

"Five dead, the rest are under arrest by the local police,_ Daiyamo_."

"_Kuso,"_ the man cursed under his breath. "Send a bribe over the GCPD, get our people out of there. We can pin this on thee next few gangbangers they arrest."

"_Hai._ And the man who escaped with the drugs? We have him leaving that hospital in the Auburn District. We can follow him and eliminate him if you wish."

"_Un_. Stand down," the man replied, shaking his head. "This man . . . He killed five of our men by himself with a pistol. This is all the confirmation we need. It _is_ him."

"The 'ronin,' _Daiyamo_?"

"_Sou des,_" answered the black-clad man. "Follow him, but keep out of sight. I don't want to disturb this man any more. He has earned our respect today." He stepped away from his car, and glanced up at the building before him. "I'll be in touch later, Kenshi. I need to visit my daughter, I heard she's awake now. _Ja ne._" With that, the black-clad man closed his cell phone and pocketed it, and headed inside, stepping underneath the glowing letters that proclaimed the building to be the "Rainer's Memorial Hospital."

* * *

_**Job Four: Silence**_

* * *

The rest of the transit was a blur. Seifer had dropped off the bag - the duffel shaking in his hands - and had then driven back to the hospital, almost on instinct. He didn't really know what he was doing; one moment he was on the road, the next he was walking blindly into the hospital, pausing only to duck into the bathroom before anyone saw the blood on his clothes. 

He couldn't shake the images. The younger detective's face erupting with blood, the other officer's thrashing and screams, and the _eyes-_

Cold water splashed over his face as he wiped the last of the blood off, the _hiss_ of the faucet filling his ears. He looked up into the mirror before him, remembering a SeeD technique for waking oneself up after shell-shock. He looked over his own features, tracing the scar on his face, looking into his eyes, counting the hair on his chin . . . .

The mental exercise managed to keep his mind off the _thing_ he'd seen in the hospital, and after several seconds, the ex-knight turned off the water. He doffed his jacket, hiding the blood-stained sleeves, and moved out of the bathroom. His hands were still shaking - the adrenaline was wearing off, leaving him feeling a bit weakened - but he was still able to call the elevator and ascend to the fourth floor, where Fujin's room was located in the South Wing.

He moved down the hallway, doing his best to calm his nerves, and found her room. He stepped inside, and glanced around, expecting Raijin to be asleep, or maybe see a doctor or nurse checking on her.

Instead, as he entered the room, he was greeted by a massive pair of meaty hands, those of a very not-sleeping Raijin, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. The ex-knight's vision was filled with an exuberant Raijin's wild grin.

"She's awake, ya know!" he shouted in Seifer's face, and before the bewildered man could say anything, Raijin wheeled him toward the hospital bed, where he saw Fujin laying, slightly propped up on pillows, but with eyes quite open and very much awake.

The entire ordeal from the hospital and the mad motorcycle chase vanished in an instant as he saw her open eyes and the slight smile she managed, and Seifer dropped his coat in a seat and rushed to her side. She reached up with a hand, her fingers shaking from weakness, as he dropped down by her side. His fingers touched hers, and though her hand was still slightly chilled, she was very much alive and real.

"You're okay," he managed to say, and an instant later he realized how stupidly obvious that was. But just as fast, Seifer dismissed it, and was honestly elated that she was awake.

"I was worried, really," he added, shaking his head, and then managed a laugh. "You're awake."

"Glad . . . to see you too, Seifer," she answered, and not in her usual harsh, one-word method of talking. "Raijin . . . He said you were out, and I was waiting for you to come back."

"Well, I am," he added. "Safe and sound."

"Indeed," came a voice over his shoulder, and Seifer looked up, to see a man standing on the other side of the bed, who he hadn't noticed when he'd come inside - most likely due to Raijin's enthusiastic greeting. The man was clad in all black, expensive clothes, and his eyes were shaded by sunglasses. Both hands were clasped behind his back, and he caught the man's skin tone and slight accent- Estharian. He extended a hand toward Seifer, who stood and shook it, almost reflexively.

"You must be Seifer Almasy," he began. "I'm Shiro Matsuda."

_That_ surname slammed into Seifer like a pile of bricks, and he blinked, surprised to be speaking to this man, though in retrospect, he shouldn't have been. After all, Matsuda _was_ the last name shared by both Fujin and Raijin.

"Your . . . father?" he asked, surprised, glancing between the petite woman in the hospital bed and the huge man towering beside him.

_I kinda thought he would be taller._

"This is, kind of a surprise, I guess," Seifer managed to say, and Raijin boomed a laugh.

"Hey, we weren't expecting Dad to show up either, ya know?" he remarked. Shiro managed a sheepish grin, nodding.

"Yes, I have had an unfortunate tendency to not be present much in my own children's lives," he said, somewhat regretfully. "I'm in charge of a very extensive business endeavor, and neither Fujin nor Raijin have any real interest or desire to get involved in such dry and boring matters, and I don't blame them. Mercenary work always suited them better, I suppose." He nodded toward Seifer, and smiled warmly.

"So, I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Almasy," he continued, and Seifer bristled at the casual mention of his name, and alarm bells wnet off in his mind. How the hell did this man know who he was?

"Fujin and Raijin said a great deal about you," Shiro continued. "In fact, they said you were supporting both of them and paying for Fujin's hospital bills all by yourself. That's very difficult work, and I understand what you must be going through. Therefore, all that money you've been getting together to pay for her treatments . . . is yours now. I'm going to personally pay all of her hospital bills." Seifer blinked in surprise at the offer.

"What?" he asked, and Shiro nodded.

"I am her father, right? And I need to take care of my girl." He touched Fujin's hand, and she gripped it in her own weak, cool fingers. "And I know you've been working hard to keep her safe. Doing a lot of work to protect my children working with people who you don't like, running across town, and so on."

Seifer could not see Shiro's eyes, and his expression did not waver, but in that moment, he knew that the man was grinning behind his glasses in understanding. Seifer broke the connection a second later, looking down toward Fujin, whose eyes were moving between her father and her friend. Raijin, meanwhile, stood by dumbly, not catching the significance of those glances.

"Father," she said quietly. "Can I talk to Seifer alone?" Shiro smiled again and nodded.

"Of course, Fujin," he replied, and patted the top of her hand. He turned away, and waved to Raijin. "Raijin, come, let's take a walk, shall we?"

"Sure, ya know," Raijin replied, and he _did_ understand what his father meant by "take a walk." The two men departed the room a moment later, exiting with small talk that quickly faded away. Seifer waited until they were out of earshot, and turned to Fujin.

"Seifer," she whispered, looking up at him. "My father . . . You should know something about him." She was about to continue when he nodded, already knowing what she was going to say.

"Mob boss," he said immediately, and she blinked in surprise. "Yeah, I know. His goons tried to kill me an hour ago during a delivery."

"What?" she gasped, sitting up, though the words were more of a weak snarl.

"Look, it was just a case of being on he wrong side in their little turf wars," Seifer quickly explained. "They shot at me, I shot back, I killed about fifty of them, we called it a day. Nothing big."

"What were you doing?" she demanded hoarsely, and Seifer shook his head.

"That's doesn't matt-" Her hand rose up faster than he expected it would be able to and grabbed his chin.

"BULLSHIT," she growled, and Seifer knew _that_ tone. He paused for a moment, and sighed.

"Okay," he said, shaking his head. "You deserve to know. I've got a big bounty on my head, and there's this cop who's got connections to those mercenaries running this town. They know who I am, and they're threatening to use that if I don't do jobs for them. One of those jobs was the delivery that got a bunch of your dad's people killed. And he knows it." Fujin closed her eyes, and settled her head back into the pillows of her bed.

"Typical," she muttered quietly. "Shiro always acts this way."

"So what now?" Seifer asked, and she thought for a moment, before opening her eyes.

"If my father is here, and he knows what you did, then he knows what you're capable of," she explained. "He knows your name, and I didn't tell him you last name at all. So he's not just here to visit me; he's probably here to give you a job, too."

"A job?" Seifer echoed, and she nodded.

"My father is always on the lookout for talent," she added, and managed a smile. "And if he came here personally to talk to _you_, that's a compliment. Shiro . . . He's not just a boss, he's a _Daiyamo_. He's the boss of _all_ Hachikyuusan in the western continent."

"Whoa, what?" Seifer said, staring at her. "Your . . . Your father is a freaking _. . . godfather?"_

"_Daiyamo,"_ she corrected, and he shrugged, still not believing what she was saying.

"And you never told me this?" he asked, and she chuckled.

"Telling people your father is a criminal overlord isn't really a good idea, especially when you work with SeeD," she explained. "And after we left Garden, I didn't want to get him involved in that mess with Ultimecia . . . ."

"I understand," he answered, nodding. He paused, and then smiled. "Thanks for telling me."

"No problem," she replied, settling back into her pillow. Her eyes were drooping, and her voice was getting slurred from drowsiness. "I'm sleepy . . . ."

"Then rest," he replied, and she nodded slightly, her eyes closing. He watched her drift backward, collapsing into the folds of slumber for several long moments.

"Good night, Fujin," he whispered, and after a moment's hesitation, an impulse came over him. The ex-knight leaned forward and lightly kissed her on her forehead, and then pulled back. He gazed over her sleeping, peaceful face for several moments, before slowly standing up. After a couple of moments, he moved over to a nearby chair and settled into the seat, leaning his head back for a moment's rest himself.

Exhaustion struck the ex-knight like a semi-trailer on jet engines, and he was fast asleep in moments himself.

* * *

"You know what, Nicholai?" asked Enrico Fornes as he looked over the data his lieutenant had brought him. "You are, without question, a master at this kind of thing." 

"Thank you," replied the Trabian assassin as his boss looked over the data that he had brought in. Fornes sent his thin gaze over the PDA, shaking his head.

"To think we had someone like this man working for us," he muttered, and laughed. "Seifer Almasy. The ex-Sorceress' Knight himself. Ex-Garden cadet. Worth five million gil, dead or alive. This is beautiful." He glanced up to Nicholai. "You're sure he doesn't know we know?"

"He has no idea," replied the Trabian as he scratched his beard. "he may suspect, but he doesn't know that we are aware of his true identity."

"Excellent," Enrico replied. "Then it'll be an easy five million then." Nicholai blinked behind his glasses in surprise.

"Enrico, it may not be that simple," he explained. "This man is, after all, a trained Garden agent and the former Sorceress' Knight. He is not to be taken lightly."

"One man, alone, and with no support, worth that much money, Nicholai," Enrico replied, pointing at Nicholai. "One bullet, five million gil. And honestly, would anyone care if we killed him? Really? I don't think so, especially considering what a worthless piece of disowned trash this guy is."

"He would be much more valuable if we continued to use him," Nicholai added, shaking his head. "This man is worth a hundred of our regular soldiers. To simply throw away such a valuable asset would be foolish beyond reproach. Enrico, you should consider this carefully."

Enrico settled back in his chair, considering his associate's words, and nodded.

"You may be right, Nicholai. But even so, he's worth a lot of money. However valuable he may be, he's not part of our family and thus not protected by us. He's nothing more than odd muscle to us, you know this. I can get hundreds of goons to do this guy's work, but none of those goons are worth five million gil. I can live with icing this one."

Nicholai stared at Enrico with a blank expression, before finally nodding.

"If that is what you wish, Enrico," he muttered under his breath, and turned to leave the office.

* * *

It was early in the morning when Seifer awoke. He checked on Fujin, and relieved the tired Raijin who had been guarding her and eating snack food, and got up, heading outside for some fresh air. He paused by the coffee room to pour a fresh cup for himself, and continued outside. He stepped out onto one of the outdoor landings overlooking the city, which itself was starting to die down now that the sun was coming up. He leaned against the railing, peering over the expanding metropolis before him, and relaxed, letting his mind wind down and banishing all thoughts of Anarak, Johnson, or the freaky _thing_ in the hospital. 

"Good morning," came a call behind Seifer, and he glanced over his shoulder, to see Shiro Matsuda walking across the landing, a smile on his face as his hands were clasped behind his back.

"Mornin'," Seifer replied with a nod, and took a sip from his coffee. "Fuu's still asleep. Haven't tried bothering her yet."

"Good," answered Shiro. "She needs the rest." He stood at the railing beside Seifer, and then glanced at him behind his shaded glasses.

"So tell me, have you gotten any more calls for jobs today?" he asked, and Seifer glanced up, at the man's knowing smirk, and sighed.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he replied, shaking his head. "Let's just drop the bullshit, okay? I've been doing work for the Anarak Syndicate, because they pay the bills. Happy?"

"And you also work for a certain corrupt police officer who likes to run drugs using blackmailed foot soldiers," Shiro added off-handedly. "And you have a five-million gil bounty on your head, too. Sooner or later someone will cash in on that."

"Y'know, I came out here so I wouldn't have to think about this kind of thing," Seifer muttered, taking another sip of his coffee.

'I'm just saying, you're in some serious trouble, Mr. Almasy."

"Can we get to the point already?" he shot back. "Fuu said you were going to give me an offer. So shoot." Shibnra paused, and then chuckled.

"Yes, she's very understanding of how I operate. Very well then." Shiro turned toward Seifer and unclasped his hands, smiling widely. "I'd like to give you an offer to join the Hachikyuusan. What you did yesterday proves you are, without question, a truly dangerous operator. I want you in my organization. We can make all your troubles disappear very quickly, and pay you far better than your other current employers." Seifer paused for a moment, considering his words, and looked up at the crime boss.

"I'll think about it," he stated bluntly, and straightened. He finished off his coffee and headed back inside the building. A few minutes later, he was cleaned up and heading down for his motorcycle, mulling over Shiro's offer as he drove down the lightening streets.

Instinctively, he had chosen not to immediately accept the crime lord's offer, but the reasoning was bothering him. From what Johnson had said, the Hachikyuusan was more . . . Legitimate, if that was the proper word, than other crime families. No drugs no human trafficking, none of the nasty stuff. Yes, they ran weapons and stolen goods, and scammed people in white collar crimes and extortion, but they didn't seem anywhere near as nasty as the other crime families, and openly opposed their use of drugs. They had loose principles, but they actually _had_ principles.

Still, the idea of working willingly with a crime lord wasn't sitting too well with Seifer, but then again, this was Fujin's father they were talking about here. It wasn't like he'd be working with a bastard like Enrico and his Anarak goons . . . .

His cell phone vibrated, and Seifer sighed. He pulled it out as he came to a stop at an intersection, and sat back on his bike.

"Yeah," he said into the speaker.

"_Hey kid,"_ came a voice, and Seifer recognized as Enrico Fornes'. _"Bright and early morning eh? Listen up. I know you're probably headed up to the office right now, right?"_

"That's right," Seifer answered, glancing around the street for a moment, but no other cars or people were out at this time of day.

"_Listen, while you're heading up here, I need you to do a little pickup for me. One of my boys left a package at 811 Gains street, in the warehouses. I need you to go get it for me."_ Seifer mentally went over the maps of the city, and paused.

"811 Gains in the Auburn District," he muttered.

_Yes. Nice and quiet. No one shooting at you this time, my boy. Go there, and in the center warehouse, in the office, my boys left a package. Go grab it for me, and come back, eh? You'll get paid pretty well, too."_

"On it," Seifer muttered, though his gut was telling - _no, screaming_ - at him to not go anywhere near that part of town. Still, he couldn't argue with the money or the ease of the job. Get in, grab the package, get out.

With only a couple seconds' hesitation, Seifer gunned the engine and started toward the west side of town, and the Auburn District, and hoped this wouldn't be a mistake.

* * *

Everything in the Auburn District was dead. And not just in terms of people or life in general; _everything_ felt dead. There was little to no breeze, few ambient sounds, and nothing moving at all. Even the sounds from other parts of the city were muted - Auburn was only a few blocks wide, but it felt as if it was miles away from the city limits. There was _nothing_ there, making it the quintessential urban wasteland. 

Well, correction: the was _something_ here, and that something was nothing Seifer had any intention of meeting again. He made note of the hospital and gave it a wide berth, and thankfully did not sense the presence he had felt yesterday, nor did he have any urge to go into that hospital like he had while fleeing the cops. There was only one real goal on his mind: meet with the Anarak goons to make the drop inside this old warehouse complex.

The drop wasn't in one of the outer warehouses; there was a larger one just beyond this one that was where the meeting was going to take place. Seifer moved around the exterior warehouse, keeping his eyes and ears alert and aware of his surroundings. He had a hand on his handgun, just in case, though he wondered what good it would be if he encountered anything else . . . unnatural.

The ex-knight rounded the outer warehouse and came into sight of the central structure of the complex, a huge two story building looming up over him. The old sheet metal that made up the building was corroded and rusted, and many of the windows were cracked and shattered, but it looked functional. He moved toward the side entrance door,a nd found it unlocked, the handle broken long ago, and stepped inside.

The only light in the interior of the vast space was a series of shafts of light shining down from the few skylights overhead. They lit the center of the huge chamber, almost two hundred feet long and half as much wide. The entire room was dark, except for those areas lit by the sunlight, and was filled with old metal racks and shelves. There were few crates or other containers here; all the wares stored here had been removed long ago. In the stark openness of this chamber, Seifer felt curiously vulnerable, though that may have just been the general aura of the Auburn area itself.

The ex-knight started across the warehouse, toward the darkened office overlooking the chamber, which itself led to the upper levels and catwalks of the structure. He kept his eyes open, and some instinctive desire made him want to move toward the sunlight, but he managed to control the urge. Moving quickly but cautiously, Seifer advanced toward the stairway leading up to the office.

A sudden breeze cut across his face, and Seifer froze, his heart exploding in a sudden rush of adrenaline. He spun around, drawing his pistol and looking about. His eyes flicked around the room, looking for any trace of the hellfire he had seen yesterday, or the _thing_ that had killed those cops. His muscles stood tensed and ready to move or act in an instant.

Long seconds passed, and nothing happened. Seifer's muscles slowly began to relax as he realized there was no threat, no burning monsters in the shadows coming to boil his skin off. He lowered the pistol, and managed a short, mocking laugh.

Seifer then almost jumped out of his skin when his cell phone rang. The ex-knight glanced around the interior of the warehouse for a moment, as if looking for anything alerted by the tone, and the reached down into his coat and pulled it out. He flipped it open and pressed it to his ear.

"Yeah, who is this?" he asked. A gruff, Trabian accent answered quickly.

"_Ambush. Get out of there."_

Seifer froze for half a second, and then, as if on cue, the entire warehouse _exploded._

The half-second of alertness, however, saved Seifer from getting shredded as a dozen rifles and sub-machineguns opened up on him from multiple directions. Bullets slammed into the floor around him and whizzed past him as black-clad men burst in through doors on either rend of the warehouse and from the office up the stairs. Seifer dove forward, past the gunfire, and more bullets slashed down at him from overhead - _overhead? The fucking skylights!_ - as he moved. He picked a direction, his mind racing, and ran toward the stairs. Up above, he could see two of his attackers in the office, firing out the windows, and one in the doorway, doing the same. He bolted for the stairs, and they tracked him, but then the ex-knight changed direction as he reached the stairs, leaping straight up at the man in the doorway. His junction-enhanced muscles propelled him into the air, and he fired his pistol as he leapt, three rounds blasting into the assassin's chest and neck. The man pitched backward, and Seifer landed in front of him on the stair.

Wasting no time, he kicked the collapsing assassin into the office, knocking down one of his attackers. The other pivoted to fire at Seifer as he stood in the doorway, but the ex-knight dove forward, rolling under his line of fire and coming up before him as bullets cut over his head. He rose, one hand grabbing the rifle's barrel. Seifer banished the pain front h burning heat of the weapon and shoved it aside, his pistol jabbing into the man's gut and firing twice. The other surviving assassin was scrambling to his feet and shoving the body off of himself, when Seifer blasted him twice in the head from behind.

Gunfire tore into the office from all directions, and Seifer chose the only other route he had: a door at the back of the office. He started through it, when a round caught up to him, stabbing into his lower back. He pitched forward, grunted in pain, and kicked the door down, banishing the agony. He had no time to heal the wound, and it didn't hit anything vital. He'd live.

* * *

"Damn, I thought I had him," growled one of the assassins as the remainder of the strike team charged up the stairs after the fleeing target. The man reloaded on the run, hoping he would be able to finish the fleeing victim off. His first bullet had almost killed him, judging by where it had hit - no one but SeeDs would be able to shrug that wound off. 

He slid a second magazine into his rifle as he ran, catching up with his comrades near the stairs, and started up it, when he caught a faint flicker of light at the corner of his eye. The soldier glanced toward it, and found his skin erupting in an inferno of agony as he looked into a pair of bloody red eyes.

He screamed, but his cries were drowned out as his skin boiled under _her_ wrath.

* * *

Seifer charged down the hallway, hearing the shouts of his pursuers behind him, and ducked down a passage running to the left. Bullets slashed past him as someone fired, but he paid it no mind, instead looking for a way out. 

A door nearby burst open, and an assassin stepped out, sub-machinegun in hand as he started to sweep the hallway. Seifer sent a fist crashing into his head, knocking him backward, and fired a round into his throat. He leapt over the dying man and continued down the hallway. His shoulder exploded in pain as an enemy bullet hit him, and Seifer dove aside a moment later as the hall branched off to his right.

He ran, and heard shouts of alarm behind him. A second later, the shouts turned into cries of agony and screams of terror, and Seifer suddenly started running faster, as he sensed the _presence._

_Shit shit shit! Its here _too_? Is this whole fucking district haunted?_

He continued running, and rounded another corridor, wondering why this warehouse had so many hallways on its second floor. He kicked down a door directly in front of him, and found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle. The ex-knight ducked instinctively as a bullet flew over his head, and fired his pistol, blasting the shooter in the chest. The man pitched backward, and fell aside, and Seifer started forward, when another assassin came into view further down the hallway. This man, too, fired, and Seifer tried twisting aside. A bullet cut past him, slicing along his flank.

The assassin shifted his aim, tracking Seifer as he tried to dodge the incoming bullets, and then froze, his face twisting in agony. Seifer managed an emphatic mental curse as he saw the now familiar expression of terror, horror, and pain etch across the man's face as his skin began to melt and erupt with blood. Then, his entire body erupted, falling apart in a shower of crimson and collapsing bones, and through the red mist, Seifer saw _her._

He stared into her bloody red eyes as she fixed her gaze on him, and started walking toward him, fire shooting around her body as she advanced. He stared, transfixed, as she walked toward him, her eyes shaded by the dirty blonde hair drooping over her face. No more than three feet high, she seemed as a delicate child, but Seifer could feel the malice in this entity as it strode toward him, and behind the blank expression on her face he could sense the pure, unadulterated violence she embodied.

The hallway darkened, and he could see past her to the door beyond, flames erupting from it as well. The floor darkened as well, and Seifer felt warmth treading up his boots. He looked down, and saw red fluid - _blood -_ rising up along the sides of his legs.

The fire then surged outward, toward him, in a roiling wave of unstoppable hellish inferno. Seifer shouted a curse, which was silent against the rumbling advance of explosive pyrotechnics, and he spun around, running in the opposite direction. The flames chased after him, and he could feel the intense heat. Sweat started running down his brow as his legs sloshed through the blood rising up around him, and he ran down the hallway. He saw something ahead of him through the haze and fire, another window, and he dashed for it as fast as he could. A pressure filled his mind and pressed against him, and he glanced back, to see her _there_, right behind him, the black pupils buried within her crimson eyes staring into his soul.

Then Seifer hit the window, and the fire hurled him out of the warehouse to crash into the alleyway below, and everything went black.

* * *

-

* * *

A number of interesting developments in this chapter, eh? The plotline is thickening, and in the next few chapters you can expect some full-on action as Seifer's own personal war begins to intensify. 

This chapter includes several references. Fujin's father, Shiro Matsuda, in physically based very loosely on Wu Zi Mu from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Additionally, his name is loosely based on that of Shirow Masamune, creator of the Ghost in the Shell series. Also, remember that game I was talking about last chapter? There's another huge, glaring reference to it in this chapter. I mean, blatantly obvious if you know the game in question...

Until next chapter...


	6. Fifth Job: Proof

_The man stared down at the bundle in his hands. White light shone down from above, washing everything out, beyond this pale-skinned, blonde man. There were strong hands, cradling from below, and the man looked down with cold, callous eyes at what he held. _

_There was a scream from nearby, and he glanced at the person crying, the woman across the room. He nodded to an orderly._

"_Get her cleaned up," he shouted over her screams. "Take her back to the Womb." The lights overhead flickered, and he scowled. "And make sure the anti-magic field is working until we can drug her. Sorceresses are dangerous, you know that." He looked down to what he held in his hands, understanding what he cradled._

"_This one," he whispered, nodding. "Yes. You. You will be a god among men . . . ."_

_**Fifth Job: Proof**_

Seifer blinked, chasing away the darkness and blurry vision, and looked around, somewhat surprised to _be_ looking around. The faint roar of a blazing fire could be heard overhead, and he turned his eyes upward, to see the window he had crashed out of. A gout of flame was emerging from it, and smoke rose up into the sky, both from that window and many more. The entire warehouse, he suddenly realized, was blazing, as if someone had dumped napalm inside it or something.

_The hell is going on here?_

He slowly stood up, shaking his head, and images of the _thing_ in the flames, the blank visage of that girl, struck him. Seifer's body was hit by a chill, and he fumbled for his dropped pistol. He picked himself up off the ground, only then becoming aware of the raging pains stretching across his body. With a quick casting of a curative spell to chase away some of the pain, the ex-knight finished standing and started across the warehouse complex, back toward his motorcycle.

Another chill fell across him as he jogged out of the complex, and he glanced around, expecting to see a sniper - _or worse_ - eyeing him. He saw nothing, but that did little to alleviate the chill and fear he was feeling. Those assassins, Anarak goons clearly, had to have had backup, and the _thing_ infesting the Auburn District was still around here somewhere. He had to get away, and right the fuck _now._

Seifer quickly boarded his motorcycle and ignited the engine. The chill was still there, and he could swear that _she_ was looking at him, and he had no desire to remain under her gaze. Without pausing, Seifer gunned the engine and drove away from the warehouse as fast as he could.

Ten minutes, fifteen miles, and some slightly calmer nerves later, Seifer began to slow down, glad to be in populated districts of the city, surrounded by people who weren't assassins trying to cut him down. He slowed down as he began to pass through the city's shopping and commercial district, and as he did so, Seifer's cell phone began ringing.

----------

Sergeant Johnson sat back in the seat of his patrol car, letting his engine idle as the passenger door slammed shut. He glanced at his partner in their little endeavor to control the streets of Galbadia City as he settled into the passenger seat, and jerked back at the grinning white face that stared back.

"Get that _fucking_ thing off your head, jackass," he snapped, and Bones managed a giggle as he pulled the dragon skull mask off his face. Johnson's slightly less than sane partner had a tendency to wear that thing, especially to spook people he liked spooking. Most people thought Bones got his name from the skull mask, but the truth, of course, was far more disconcerting . . . .

"Got some interesting news for you," Bones remarked as he tossed his sheathed katana and mask into the back seat. "Very interesting news."

"Such as?" asked the dark-skinned cop as he threw the car into drive and pulled away from the local Asp station. Bones grinned like a maniac, which was what he usually looked like anyway.

"Shiro Matsuda was at the hospital, visiting his daughter," he explained, and Johnson raised an eyebrow.

"So? Why's it mean anything to us?" he asked, and Bones shook his head.

"Johnson, you don't realize who Shiro Matsuda's daughter is?" he demanded, and Johnson shook his head.

"Look, that's your specialty. I run the streets, you run the intelligence, you know that."

"Yes, I do," Bones replied. "That's why I know that Shiro Matsuda's daughter is named Fujin Matsuda." Johnson blinked, and the pieces fell together.

"Fujin?" he muttered. "You mean . . . that punk kid Seifer's friend? The daughter of the fucking _godfather_ of the Green Dragons? That Fujin Matsuda?"

"Yep," answered Bones, and he grinned even wider. "And here's the best part. Seifer met with the boss himself. And if I'm not mistaken, Matsuda made a big offer to our patsy. You know what that means, right?" Johnson's eyes widened, and he cursed.

"Shit. If Seifer throws in with the Green Dragons, you know what that means. He'll come after _us._ Especially after we've been threatening him like we have. _Shit._ . . . and why the fuck are you smiling so much?"

"Seifer joining the Hachikyuusan is a very bad thing, right?" Bones asked. "So, we've got to stop him, and remember, he's worth five million gil. Not to mention that both Seifer and Shiro Matsuda have one very important thing that they value more than anything else."

Johnson paused as he drove, and then smiling, nodding.

"I see what you're talking about now," the cop replied. "What say we apply some leverage now while we can?"

"Thought you'd never ask, Johnson."

----------

Ten minutes, fifteen miles, and some slightly calmer nerves later, Seifer began to slow down, glad to be in populated districts of the city, surrounded by people who weren't assassins trying to cut him down. He slowed down as he began to pass through the city's shopping and commercial district, and as he did so, Seifer's cell phone began ringing. He paused, considering opening it, knowing that the last couple times that had happened he'd nearly been killed. Finally, deciding it was best to pick it up anyway, Seifer drew it out of his coat and flipped the phone open.

"Yeah?" he muttered.

"Seifer!" came the familiar voice of Shiro Matsuda. "Good thing I caught you!"

"Your sense of timing is impeccable," Seifer replied, shaking his head. "I just got jumped, probably by my old employers."

"That's really not good," remarked Shiro after a moment. "Sounds like you may need a place to lie low. I was going to invite you to a bar and gambling hall I own, to give you an offer. Come on over, listen to the offer, get a drink, and I'll figure out a way to keep those Anarak gorillas off your back."

"What about ghosts?" Seifer asked with a chuckle, eliciting a confused "eh" from the other end.

"Nevermind, I'm having a bad day," Seifer replied quickly. How is Fujin?"

"Great, just great," replied Shiro. "I checked on her before I left the hospital, actually. The doctors say she should be able to walk soon enough, maybe the next day or so. Good news."

"Yeah, it is," Seifer replied, nodding and managing a slight smile. "Where's this bar of yours? After what I've been through, I'm taking you up on that drink."

"833 Dorun Street. There'll be a bar called the "Rainbow Tiger." I'll be waiting, okay? _Ja ne, Seifer-san."_

"Yeah, bippity-boppity-boo to you too," Seifer answered, closing his phone. He gunned the engine on his bike and followed Shiro's directions to the west end of the shopping district, and within a matter of minutes he pulled up outside the building Shiro had named. As per its name, the Rainbow Tiger featured an array of multicolored neon lights framing the doorway, and over the door and the main window facing the street was the massive image of a five meter long tiger constructed out of dozens of neon light tubes of various colors.

The door was open, despite the fact that no one was inside. Seifer walked into the bar, to find it lit only by a series of neon light tubes over the bar, casting the entire wide, empty room in a cool, bloody red color. The only other person in the bar was, unsurprisingly, Shiro himself, who was sitting on one of the tables, legs crossed, and drinking from a mug. A long case, suited for a rifle or sword, was set by his crossed feet, on the table next to him. He smiled as Seifer entered, and waved him over.

"Come in, come in," he began. "Oh, and close the door behind you."

"So, what's going on here?" Seifer asked as Shiro sat cross-legged on the table. He glanced around at the neon lights, wondering why the bar was so empty. Even in early nighttime Galbadia City, some people should be visiting the bar.

"Its quite simple, Seifer," Shiro replied, setting his tea down. He glanced up to the ex-cadet, and smiled. "You're here because you're interested."

"In your offer?" Seifer echoed, shrugging. "I may be. Why did that make you bring me here?"

"If you want to join the Hacikyuusan, and gain access to the considerable resources at our disposal, then you need to prove your worth." Shiro took another sip of his tea with one hand, and reached down to the long case by his feet. "And to show how much I would wish for you to join us, I'm offering you a gift. Fujin is my daughter, so she tells me things. One of those things was a story of how you lost many fights to Squall Leonhart." he tossed the case to Seifer, who caught it. He looked at Shiro in confusion and suspicion, and set the case on a table. He flipped the latches and opened the lid, and stared at the contents. After several moments of surprised gazing, the ex-knight reached in and withdrew the item:

_Hyperion._

"You've had your eye on me for a while," he whispered, and looked down the length of the gunblade, feeling its familiar weight. He twirled the weapon in the air and did a quick cut with it, sensing the perfection in the weapon's design. They had replicated it perfectly.

"Indeed," Shiro replied. "And now, the reason I had you come here." Seifer turned toward him as he set his tea down. "I need to see your worth for myself, Seifer. But first, I apologize."

"For what?" Seifer answered.

"For this," Shiro replied, and from _nowhere_ a blade shot out, gripped in his hand, and sliced at Seifer's face.

Hyperion snapped up into a block, deflecting the strike, and Seifer leapt back and away. Shiro shot to his feet and leapt off the table in a flying attack at Seifer, his blade shooting toward him. Seifer parried the weapon's thrust - _oriental straight sword -_ with a deft parry. Shiro went low as he broke away from the parry, his straight sword cutting at Seifer's knees. The ex-knight hopped over the strike, flicking his blade down low at Shiro's chest. Shiro backed up a step, evading the cut, and went in with another thrust. Seifer snapped his gunblade across t parry, and Shiro twirled his own weapon up and over the gunblade, tapping it aside and giving him a straight shot at Seifer's chest.

Seifer twisted aside and slammed his gunblade down on Shiro's straight blade. He grabbed the mob boss' right wrist with his left hand. His right arm, gunblade in hand, shot over the stilled blade and straight at Shiro's head. The crime lord weaved his left hand inside the swing, however, and somehow caught the cut by the flat of the gunblade. He twisted around, dropping low, and kicked out as he fell, hitting both of Seifer's shins with his feet and throwing the ex-knight onto his stomach. Shiro sprang back up to his feet and leapt backward as Seifer pushed up one-handed. He looked up in time to see Shiro hit the back wall and kick off, leaping straight at Seifer with another flying stab.

Seifer snapped his gunblade across in a parry that knocked the striking sword aside, and shot his left arm across in a hook that almost caught Shiro across the jaw. The mob boss's left hand shot up, catching the hook with his palm, and his sword flashed low at Seifer's gut. Hyperion intercepted knocking the sword away and up, and Shiro cu down as the sword rose. Hyperion intercepted, and the gunblade fired a blast from its magazine. Knocking the straight sword away. Seifer stepped ahead, pressing his advantage, thrusting and slashing, but Shiro easily gave way, circling around to the side and leaping up onto a table. He kicked off the table as Seifer rounded it, and crossed to the bar. He spun around, raising his blade with his right hand and gesturing for Seifer to come on.

Seifer obliged, rushing into the battle with a quick thrust. Shiro moved to block, but Seifer cut the strike short and spun around in an eye-blink, cutting low at Shiro's ankles. The mob boss leapt up and backwards, over the cut and onto the bar. Seifer came out of his spin leaping, up onto the bar as well. His feet hit the bar and his gunblade hit Shiro's blade. The mob boss stepped back, sword weaving before him, and Seifer advanced. Hyperion rang against the straight sword as they moved down the bar, colliding a dozen, and then two dozen times, in the space of a dozen seconds. Their swords met high, then low, and the Seifer dropped, right leg shooting across into Shiro's knee. The mob boss grunted and lost his balance, toppling off the bar. Seifer jumped down in pursuit, but Shiro rolled onto his feet and parried the descending slash in a single smooth motion.

Seifer came in hard and fast, and Shiro gave ground, his sword weaving before him in a striking array of brilliant defensive maneuvers. He continued to retreat, and a slight smile rose over his face as he leapt back up onto a table. Seifer went low, for his knees, and the mob boss hopped back off the table, putting it between them. Not one to deny such an opportunity, Seifer's left leg rose into a forward kick, shoving the table at Shiro. He'd barely hit the floor before it was flying at him, and he jumped again, this time over the table. Seifer rushed at Shiro as he came down, but the mob boss lowered his sword and raised his left hand, indicating for them to stop.

"Good, good," he remarked, his smile widening. "Excellent. That will do."

"What was that all about?" Seifer growled as he lowered his gunblade, slightly confused. "A test?" Shiro smiled and nodded, and walked back over to the table he had been sitting on. He picked up a small scabbard, which had been hidden by his body, and sheathed his blade.

"I wanted to see what you were capable of, first-hand," Shiro admitted. "I knew you had killed many men before, but I needed to see you in action with my own two eyes. I was not disappointed." He turned back toward Seifer, and gestured toward the bar. "As my way of apology for startling you like that, a drink? Its on me." Seifer chuckled and nodded. He glanced back at the case that had held his gunblade, and saw a scabbard inside for the weapon, which he took out and sheathed his weapon. Shiro stepped behind the bar and picked up a mug.

"Fujin says you like Reagan Gold, right?" he asked, and Seifer nodded. The mob boss retrieved a half-empty bottle off the back shelf and turned toward Seifer, pouring him the drink as he sat down at the bar.

"So, tell me, Seifer," Shiro asked as he poured the beer. "From what I've gathered, you used to believe very heavily in fate and destiny. Do you still believe so?"

"Not really," He grunted as Shiro passed him the mug. "I used to, yeah, but now . . . Not so certain."

"Why?" Shiro asked, his tone curious. Seifer paused, and took a sip from his mug as he mulled it over.

"I had this belief that I was destined to be the best warrior in history," he explained. "A romantic dream, you know? To be a fighter who would be known for generations. I mean, its really one of the only immortalities that you can get, right? To be one of those legends that _everyone_ knows from their history books. That was what I wanted. But now, after everything I've gone through, it doesn't seem that important. I'm not a legend, I'm just a murderer and a criminal. I mean, how can I become the best warrior in history when I'm out here doing petty work for crime bosses?" Seifer shook his head as he took another drink from his mug. Shiro nodded in understanding as he listened to the younger warrior before him.

"You certainly sound like you've been through some tough times, Seifer," he offered. "I can sense that you still have a strong ambition within you, however. And not only are you ambitious, but you have the talent and skill to back it up. That combination of ability and will is very desirable now, particularly to me."

"So, get to the point," Seifer replied quickly. "You want to give me a job. But really, the last thing I want right now is to work for _another_ crime family."

"No," Shiro replied quickly, holding up a hand. "The last thing you want is to work for someone _dishonorable._" Seifer looked up at Shiro, and was about to refute the claim, but then realized in a flash of insight that he was _right._ Seifer's disgust at working for the Anarak Syndicate was not because he didn't like working for crime bosses, but because he was working for someone who, in his mind, was dishonorable by the nature of their business. They were morally bankrupt thugs, and he was working _with_ them.

"I am the _Daiyamo_ of the Green Dragon sect of the overall Hachikyuusan organization," Shiro continued. "And right now, I'm offering you a chance out of the trouble you are in. My daughter is under your protection, which is why you are under so much pressure. I will take that pressure off of you, and give you an opportunity to work with one of the most powerful organizations in the _world_."

"You're offering to make me another foot soldier and assassin in your own crime family," Seifer remarked, to which Shiro shook his head intently.

"No, Seifer," he replied. "You are worth far more than any mere soldier on the streets. I can tell simply by the way your very presence has caused all those in the current power structure to shift. Word is spreading about you, in abstract terms, and people are reacting. People are thinking. People are considering _you_. You are having an effect on this city and the undercurrents running through it that you can barely begin to imagine. Such a person is dangerous, daring, and important. That is why I'm coming to you now, and why I'm offering you a position as _saiko-komon._ In other words, my second in command."

Seifer looked up at Shiro from his drink, shocked by the words that he was speaking.

"That look on your face," Shiro commented off-handedly, grinning. "It says 'You must be crazy to offer something that insane to a man like me. You are joking right? Because its too good to be true. Sign me up.' Am I correct?"

There were several more long moments of silence as Seifer ran over the offer in his mind. But there was no denying that in many ways, Shiro was _right._

_This guy is slick. Not only can he read me like a book, but he's already done all his research, and now he's offering me a job. And not just a job as a goon, but as his personal second in command. That's . . . insane. This man knows everything about me already, my history, my actions . . . And he's willing to put all that aide and give me an offer this big?_

". . . what's the catch?"

"No catch," Shiro replied immediately. "Well, aside from the obvious catches of being in a commanding position of one of the most powerful crime families in the world. With us, you would be unstoppable. What do you say?"

---------

A dozen pairs of boots marched down the pristine white hallway of the Rainer's Memorial Hospital. There steps were controlled and purposeful, and the doctors and nurses didn't stop or question them. After all, each of these men wore the urban fatigues, vests, and caps of Asp mercenaries, and were thus considered to be just like normal GCPD police officers . . . Though such a large number of officers moving through the hospital, all of them with sub-machineguns slung over their shoulders, certainly drew interest and surprise, particularly when compared with the man leading the column of guns-for-hire.

The dozen purposeful, disciplined Asp troops were following behind the smiling, swaggering form of Bones, who had gathered this little troupe for an unauthorized and unofficial visit to the local hospital. His katana was sheathed at his hip, but his left hand was tapping it idly as he walked down the hallway with an easy, loose, and almost carefree gait, grinning with each step.

The troupe of mercenary cops approached the local nurses' station,a nd the nurse behind the counter looked up, surprised to see such a large and well-armed contingent marching up to her desk.

"Can I help you?" she asked, and Bones' smile grew even wider, and he nodded. He leaned forward on the station, his grin imparting complete, and almost creepy, pleasure.

"Yes, you can," he replied. "I'm looking for a Fujin Matsuda. Is she in this wing?"

Thirty seconds later, eight Asp troops were waiting in the hallway outside, while the remainder accompanied bones as he stepped into the hospital room where Fujin was resting. Her brother was dozing, but woke up as the five men stepped into the room. He looked up in alarm, and started to rise, when Bones raised a hand and flashed Raijin a disarming smile.

'relax," he said quickly, turning toward Fujin as she slept. "We're not here to make a ruckus."

"Then who are you?" Raijin began, confused and alarmed. "What's happening?"

Boones shrugged, his grin somehow growing even larger, and his left hand tapped his katana a few more times.

"Your buddy Seifer is worth a whole lot of money," he finally finished. Raijin's eyes widened, both from shock at the admission and the realization of the threat, and then they grew even wider as he felt a sudden pressure in his chest.

"The good news," Bones continued, turning to Raijin, keeping his hand on his katana's handle. "Is that you're already in a hospital, so the chances of you actually dying are pretty slim." Raijin reached up to his chest, touching the katana that was stabbed between his lungs and just to the right of his heart, uncertain precisely _how_ Bones had managed to draw his weapon that fast. Bones, for his part, simply maintained his smile and extracted his katana from Raijin's chest, and shoved the big man back into his chair as blood gushed out of his torso.

"Let's get our girl out of here," the mercenary ordered his men. "Seifer's gonna have a nice surprise if he thinks joining the Hachikyuusan will keep him alive."

As Raijin blacked out, the last thing he saw was Bones' wild, gleeful jester grin.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**A/N:** Obviously, the fight between Shiro and Seifer was inspired by a certain movie, which should be easy to figure out. Other than that, some people may start noting a similarity between that crazy fellow Bones and a certain manga character from a series named after a household cleaning chemical. I'll say no more.

Until next chapter...


	7. Sixth Job: Rescue

_"You cheated. We weren't supposed to use magic."_

_"Let me ask you this: you make SeeD. You go up head to head against some enemy soldier. He uses magic on you, knocking you on your ass. But instead of giving you a scar, he chops your skull in, killing you. Will you complain about him cheating? No, you won't; you'll just be dead."_

_  
"Are you trying to say you're helping me? You're saying this morning was for my benefit?" _

"Yeah. People fight dirty in real life. When it comes down to life and death, will you care about rules? Or will you care about survival?"

_**Job Six: Rescue**_

"A toast, Seifer?" Shiro asked, raising his mug, and Seifer grinned. He held up his own mug, and clinked it with the Hachikyuusan boss'.

"Hell yes," the ex-knight replied, and both he and Shiro took long, satisfying gulps from their mugs. Seifer emptied the entire glass he held in his fingers, throwing his head back and gulping down the Reagan Gold. He finished, and wiped his mouth with the back of his jacket sleeve.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" asked Shiro as he took Seifer's empty mug and dropped it behind the bar. Managing a nod, Seifer chuckled.

"_Saiko-komon,_" he remarked, letting the strange Estharian phrase roll off his tongue. "Never thought I'd join up with a bunch of Estharian gangsters." He looked up to Shiro, shaking his head. "Strange world, huh?"

"Indeed," the Estharian mob boss replied, nodding. He leaned against the bar as he spoke. "You are now one of the most powerful men in the world. Naturally, there are some supposed 'rituals' we'll have to deal with, in order to properly formalize the agreement, but those are formalities and will come in due time. For now, we enjoy the fact that we are partners, eh?"

"With another round?" Seifer asked, and Shiro laughed and started pouring another beer for his new lieutenant.

"Perhaps," Shiro answered, and Seifer nodded as he heard the bar's spout hiss and the drink fill up his mug. As the delicious, cold amber liquid filled the glass, however, Seifer became aware of a sensation rolling up from his abdomen, and he rose up from the stool.

"Hold up a second," he said, waving a hand at Shiro for him to stay put. "I need to go deposit some liquid currency in the Shitter National Bank, know what I mean?" Shiro burst into another laugh as Seifer made his way toward the bathrooms, and continued to fill his drink.

Thirty seconds later, Seifer was letting out a long, drawn out sigh of relief as he stood in front of one of the toilets. Moments later, the toilet flushed, and Seifer started out of the stall, when his cell phone began vibrating.

"_Kuso," _he muttered under his breath, a nasty phrase Shiro had taught him moments before, and he pulled the phone out. Only one person he knew of had this number aside from Matsuda himself, and Seifer sure as hell didn't want to talk to Johnson again.

"Yeah, what?" Seifer barked into the phone.

"_Damn, bitch, you seem awfully snappy today,"_ came the familiar voice of Sergeant Johnson, and Seifer sneered as he heard the man speak. _"Now listen, I have something you need to do, understand? Bitch?"_

"How about I say '_fuck_ you'?" Seifer responded, as the alcohol began to speak a bit for him. To tell the truth, he didn't want to have this bastard of a corrupt cop hanging over his head, and now that he was the second to Shiro Matsuda himself, he was starting to see a lack of reasons to listen to Johnson anymore.

"_The fuck you saying?"_ Johnson responded, surprised for an instant. His voice then became tinged with anger. _"Are you talking _back_ to me, bitch? That is not a smart move. You know what I can do to you right now."_

"Like I said," Seifer shot back into the phone. "Fuck off, asshole. I don't listen to you anymore. I don't take orders from you, and if I ever see you again, I _will_ kill you."

Silence filled the other end for a moment. Seifer grinned, almost imaging Johnson quivering with fury on the other side.

" _. . . fine then. Your little bitch is going to pay the price for you not properly respecting me," _he snarled. Seifer shook his head as he answered the threat.

"If you have any sense, you'll leave me and Fujin alone from now on," Seifer replied. "I'm not your bitch anymore, Johnson. Go find some other punk to do your dirty work."

"_Listen, Seifer, if you're not going to do my work for me, then you're of no further use to me," _Johnson explained. _"Thus, that five million gil bounty on your head looks mighty enticing right now."_

"Bring it," Seifer replied immediately, not swayed by the cop's threats. "Throw every bitch-ass mercenary and bounty hunter out there after me. I'll keep the funeral homes busy." At this, Johnson started laughing quietly.

"_You don't understand what I mean, do you?" _he asked. Seifer blinked, and suddenly he started to sober up. Judging by the man's tone, he knew something Seifer didn't. Seifer opened his mouth to speak, and then froze, stock still.

"_. . . Seifer . . . ."_

The voice was quiet, it was pained, and it was tired, but the ex-knight recognized it instantly.

"_FUJIN!"_

His shout nearly cracked the restroom mirror as he stared at himself, a thousand thoughts flashing through his mind, most of them curses at himself being such an idiot as to leave Fujin so vulnerable, and terror at the sudden danger his friend was now in on his behalf.

"_Now you understand," _came Johnson's voice once more. _"You have two options, so listen closely. The first is to show up at the Fourth Asp Precinct Command Center in three hours, alone and empty-handed. Do that, and we drop Fujin back off at the hospital, unharmed. You, naturally, will be used to net us a tidy pile of cold hard gil."_

Seifer continued to stare into the mirror, into his own eyes, and didn't respond, the shock still holding him still and unmoving.

"_The second option is to show up at the same precinct," _Johnson continued. _"Except in this case, you do it with Shiro Matsuda's head in a bag. Both you and Fujin go away unharmed. Either way, we win. Oh, and don't try anything stupid, okay? We won't complain if you show up with a bunch of Green Dragon goons, as we need the target practice, but it will be an inconvienience, and I don't like inconvieniences. Understand . . . _Bitch?"

The phone line went dead, and after a second, Seifer's right arm arced across and into the mirror, shattering it. Glass buried into Seifer's knuckles as shards of metal and glass rained down around him, but he ignored the pain as he closed his eyes, damning himself for getting Fujin involved in this mess again.

The door behind him flew open, and Seifer knew that it was Shiro who had entered the bathroom.

"Seifer!" he called, alarmed, and doubly so by the broken mirror. Seifer turned toward him, dropping his cell phone into his pocket and pulling the shards of glass from his knuckles.

"What happened?" Shiro asked, as the ex-knight numbly pulled broken glass from his hand, and then shook his head.

"You never should have bothered with me," he muttered as bloodied glass fell into the sink.

"What are you talking about?" Shiro demanded.

"They've got Fujin," Seifer answered, and it took a moment for the impact of Seifer's statement to hit the mob boss. Behind his sunglasses, Shiro's eyes widened, and he grabbed Seifer's shoulders.

"Fujin? My _daughter? _Who?"

"That cop, Johnson, and his mercenary buddies," Seifer replied, shaking his head as the last bits of blood-stained glass fell to the floor.

"Those . . . _chikushyo teine!_ I'll give them their own roasted testicles on a stick for this!" The expression on his face showed nothing short of the raging, white-hot fury of a father whose children were endangered.

"No," Seifer hissed, shaking his head in resignation. "We can't go after them now."

"Why?" Shiro replied, storming out of the bathroom in a frenzied rage. "I'm calling my men! We're going to settle this here and now. They go after my daughter, then they face the unbridled violence of the Green Dragons!"

"That's exactly what these fuckers want!" Seifer snapped, grabbing Shiro's shoulder. The mob boss turned toward his new second, who shook his head. Anger etched across his face, but it was tempered by pain and resignation.

"He didn't say it outright," Seifer continued, "but Johnson implied that if we tried to go after Fujin by force, then they'll kill her. And I think he's hoping we go after her by force, so he can justify a war between his mercenary thugs and the Dragons. And you know that we'd lose that war, at least in terms of manpower and weaponry. Asp is a match for most small governments in terms of firepower. We can't beat them in a straight fight, and they know that."

"Then what the hell do we do?" Shiro demanded, his anger not subsiding. "I am not about to let these men-"

"They want us dead," Seifer replied, shaking his head. Shiro blinked, and then closed his eyes, understanding what Seifer meant.

"They're using my daughter as leverage to turn you against me?" he asked, and Seifer shook his head, denying the suspicion.

"They want one of us dead," the ex-knight explained. "Either I show up alone and they kill me and release Fujin, or I give them your head. Either way, they get what they want."

"I'm not about to let either of those possibilities happen," Shiro declared, adamantly refusing to budge. "I did not build this family into its current level of power by bowing to threats from corrupt police and honorless mercenaries!"

"Then what will you do?" Seifer responded. "Take the Dragons to war with Asp and the Galbadia City Police Department? You'll lose, and you know it, and Fujin will die regardless!"

"What other choice do we have?" Shiro demanded angrily. "I don't see any other options here, and I'm not letting these bastards get away with this!" Seifer listened to his words, and closed his eyes, rubbing his eye sockets with his bloodied hands. This was getting nowhere, and Shiro wasn't listening to reason, or at least wasn't getting what Seifer was starting to understand that he had to do.

"If we go to war," Seifer whispered. "Fujin dies. And I'm not about to give you to them. Even if they let Fujin go, she'll never forgive me for killing her father, and if they decide to get greedy, they could kill us all. There's only one option that has any chance of making sure Fujin comes back alive and safe, and we both know it." Shiro stared at Seifer from behind his sunglasses, and realized what the ex-knight was getting at. He looked into Seifer's face, reading the man's slack, exhausted expression, and realized that he was looking into the face of a man who was resigned to a fate he neither wanted nor could avoid.

"No," Shiro refused. "I'm not letting you hand yourself over to the enemy for my sake."

"You don't have a choice," Seifer replied, stepping past his comrade and toward the door. "I have to do this myself. For Fujin's sake."

"No!" Shiro shouted, striding after Seifer. "I will not permit you to! Seifer! Stop! That's an order!"

Seifer froze, and then turned toward Shiro, meeting his shaded eyes with ice-cold determination.

"Shiro, I am Seifer _Fucking_ Almasy. I don't give _a shit _about orders, no matter whose they are." With that, the ex-knight turned and threw open the door, and strode out toward his motorcycle, without looking back.

Shiro watched Seifer walk outside, noting the fatalistic and almost suicidal expression on his face as he solemnly climbed onto the back of his motorcycle. The engine roared, and it moved off the curb, and out of sight.

After a few seconds, Shiro looked away, and sighed, and then circled around the back of the bar, where he drew out his compact cell phone. He started to dial a number, one he normally used for this kind of situation, but then paused, remembering Seifer's words and letting the cooler, businesslike side of him speak.

"If the Green Dragons attack Asp," he muttered under his breath, shaking his head. "A street war between Hachis and mercenary cops would rip this city apart . . . ."

But he couldn't leave his daughter in these _chikushyo teine_'s hands, and wasn't about to let a person like Seifer simply drive off to his death, but he had no real options. He had to think, to act rationally, a hard task when his daughter was in the hands of ruthless mercenaries. He could commit enough troops to intervene, but the cost would be terrible in the long run.

A moment later, however, one word from that last thought echoed in his mind.

_Cost . . . ._

A moment later, Shiro dialed his cell phone, and few moments later, a voice picked up.

"Yes, hello," he began. "Legal? Yes, I have something I need taken care of immediately. This is an extreme rush job. Shiro Matsuda. Access account number 33-725-A21, First Balamb Bank. Time stamp for arrival is three hours from now, maximum. Yes, like I said, I need a rush job. High risk. Yes, triple compensation for speed and risk, I'm good for it. Okay, I'll hold for Tactical and Contracts."

----------------

Seifer was lost in swirling thoughts as he drove down the street on his motorcycle, mentally brutalizing himself for bringing his best friend into this whole quagmire. Fujin had no involvement in his decision to join Ultimecia, and she had done everything to persuade him to not follow that self-destructive course of madness. And now here she was, reaping the harvest of Seifer's insane bid for power, in the middle of a gang war in downtown Galbadia City.

_I am not letting you suffer for my crimes, Fuu. No way in hell. Even if that means I'm going to have to let them kill me. Neither I nor your father are going to pay for my mistakes. _My_ sins. This is my fight, and this is my penance._

The mantra repeated itself in Seifer's mind, and he slowly calmed, his thoughts no longer swirling as they once were. As he repeated that line of thought, a strange peace began to wash over Seifer, as he accepted his fate, a fate that he had no choice in and that he didn't want to fight. A fate he _couldn't_ fight anymore.

_Time to dance with the devil, Seifer. I called down the thunder, and its time to reap the whirlwind, for Fujin's sake. No more running._

Seifer nodded to himself as he drove, and for an instant, he closed his eyes, imaging Fujin's face, and managed a smile as the suicidal thoughts went through his head.

_Time's up. Time to _die_, Seifer._

He opened his eyes, and found a little girl standing on the motorcycle's handlebars.

The absurdity of the situation, wherein a child was standing on his bike, hair and clothes unaffected by the rushing wind, was so profound that Seifer did not instantly realize, nor recognize, the red eyes or the dirty blonde hair for a couple of seconds. But then, he realized that he was staring at the same thing that he'd seen in the Auburn District, and blood-chilling terror shot through him.

Then there was darkness.

_He was standing in a hallway, and a warm, sticky flow of amorphous goo rose up past his waist. Seifer looked down, and he realized he was wading in a sea of _blood_, that slowly rose up along the tiled hallway's length and lickled the edges of his fingers._

_Ahead, down the hallway's corridor_ - the corridor of a hospital - _Seifer saw a doorway, and he slogged forward through the fluids, the blood rising up steadily toward his chest. He advanced, moving under the combined weight of instinct and fear, and he sloshed through the blood toward the doorway. His hand neared it, and closed around the handle -_

_An arm shot up, bursting from the sea of blood, grabbing his shirt and pulling down. He recoiled, and as he fell back, he saw a figure rise up from the blood, a young woman, her whole body soaked in crimson, her eyes burning red as she yanked on his shit, pulling him down into the sea of crimson with her-_

"Shit shit shit!" Seifer shouted, bursting out of the vision. He shook his head, and looked up, to see the girl was no longer standing on the bike's handlebars, but hovering just in front of them, matching the bike's speed, her clothes and hair still not moving from the wind blowing against Seifer's face. He stared at her for an instant, and then, in a shocking moment of action that _wasn't_ skin-boiling violence, she . . . shook her head.

_- no -_

Then, she reached down, grabbed the handlebars over Seifer's fingers, sending an icy chill up his arms, and _twisted._

The bike spun, and then flipped, and Seifer was sent hurtling from the vehicle and toward the pavement, where darkness crashed into his head along with unyielding asphalt.

----------------

There were less than thirty minutes to spare before the deadline, but they had arrived. Admittedly, he was asking a lot of them to deploy this fast, but Shiro Matsuda was getting more worried every second as they entered his bar. Sixteen of them, all well-armed. Excellent. Knowing their reputation, sixteen was overkill.

"Sorry we're a bit slow," said the short one, and Shiro nodded.

"I'm sorry to call you people here so quickly," he explained, but the leader shook his head.

"Whatever, it doesn't matter," he replied in a dismissive tone. "Sweep and clear of an Asp-controlled police precinct, correct?"

"Sweep and extract, to be more precise," Shiro replied. He reached into his pocket and drew out a wallet, and pulled out a photograph, and handed it to the team leader. He frowned as he looked at the woman in the picture, Shiro's daughter.

"We need to rescue this woman," the leader stated. It was not a question.

"And one more, an associate of mine," Shiro added. "Also associated with her. From what I'm aware of, he should be familiar, being on all the wanted boards by bounty hunters, so you should know the man."

The team leader grimaced, but then nodded.

"Yeah, we know who you're talking about," he replied. "Contract is being finalized. Meanwhile, my team will head over and prepare to breach the building. We will report back once we've completed our mission, Mr. Matsuda."

"Thank you," Shiro offered, and the leader shrugged.

"We're just doing our jobs," he replied. "No thanks necessary."

----------------

Seifer wasn't sure how long he'd been out. He _was_ sure that he had a massive headache that was pounding the side of his skull, and in the back of his mind he was faintly aware that he had only his junctions to thank for keeping him alive. Burning pains ran along the side of his face, and he realized that he had slid along the pavement after his crash. Slowly, he pushed himself up off the concrete from his stomach, and managed to look around.

His motorcycle lay nearby, scuffed and damaged, but looking functional. How exactly it had ended up right beside him was something he didn't understand, but spending a second pondering that odd detail as he stood sent a chill up his spine. He spun around, looking up and down the deserted street for any sign of the strange girl who had caused his wreck.

There was nothing. No one was moving, and nothing walked along this street. There were no working lights, and an empty, silent stillness filled the air. It was blank and lifeless, as dark and secluded as the deepest depths of the Auburn District.

It took Seifer a second to realize that, in fact, he _was_ in the Auburn District.

_Shit. I was so caught up in myself that I didn't realize I was driving through this damn place._

He quickly ran to his bike and lifted it up. He glanced around once more, looking for the apparition that had attacked him, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered why it had thrown him from his bike. But that was far at the back of his mind as he started his bike once more, and accelerated as fast as he could out of the district, before he could be visited again by the freakish child.

Seifer would be damned if he'd let some stupid ghost or whatever prevent him from doing what he could to protect Fujin.

The Auburn District, and the rest of the city itself, passed by as a blur, and Seifer soon found himself in the city's more active warehouse district, remote and distant, but not haunted by flesh-boiling demon-ghosts. Within moments, he had found and pulled up in front of the building in question, the old police precinct.

The building was formerly a Galbadia City Police Department precinct, but with the recent Asp contracts that had been put into place, it had been reactivated as a local headquarters for the Asp battalion that policed this district of the city. Three stories high, and likely filled with mercenary cops all ready to kill him for pocket change.

Seifer had seen worse, and he calmly stepped off his motorcycle and walked around the back of the building. He glanced toward the various windows, and noted that the second and third floor windows were all dark and lightless, despite this being nighttime in Galbadia City. The place should have been bustling, but was very quiet and dark.

_Or course it would have to be, if they're going to have a quiet execution, right?_

Seifer circled around the back alley behind the building, and knew he was being watched - probably from down the sights of rifles and sub-machineguns. He ignored the mercenaries that were doubtless waiting for the order to kill him, and stepped up to the back door. He raised a hand to knock it, but found it opening, and the barrel of a ten-gauge shotgun was thrust in his face.

"Inside," growled the weapon's wielder, a man clad in the urban camo, cap, tac-vest, and sunglasses of an Asp mercenary. Seifer did as he told, as the man backed up. He entered a short corridor lined with a half-dozen more Asp soldiers, all leveling sub-machineguns and shotguns at the ex-cadet.

"And just like that," came a call from down the hallway, and out the door at the far end emerged Sergeant Johnson, smiling. He stepped aside, and behind him came the familiar figure up Bones, casually tossing an odd dragon skull mask in his left hand as he regarded Seifer with a wide grin.

"The man, the legend," added Bones, shaking his head. "Who knew that snatching some helpless, poisoned bitch from a hospital would get us Seifer_ fucking_ Almasy?"

"Show me Fujin," Seifer demanded, and Bones held up a hand, shaking his head.

"Ah, making demands, are we, Seifer?" he remarked. "No no no. You don't make demands. We do." He paused, and glanced down at Seifer's belt. "Wait a second. Where did _you_ get a gunblade?"

"Around," Seifer replied off-handedly, and Bones looked back up to his face, a grin threading across his features. Seifer watched his expression, and could tell that an idea was forming in his mind.

"Okay, okay," Bones added. "Right this way. I'll show you your little girl, and then we can take care of business." He gestured over his shoulder, and walked back through the door behind him. Johnson followed, and Seifer started after them, with a dozen mercenaries following, weapons leveled at his head.

"I'm assuming that since you're lacking the head of a certain important person," Johnson commented, "that you're not here to pick up your girl, eh?" Seifer didn't respond, instead simply firming his jaw. The cop glanced back at him, and noted the fatalistic look in the man's eyes, and smiled as they started down a set of stairs.

"You know, I'd love to do the deed myself, but Bones has been itchin' to gut you personally," the sergeant added. He shrugged. "No idea why, though. Maybe he's just hungry for some more carnage. Being a GCPD merc doesn't do a man much good when he wants to kill people, after all, though he _is_ relatively new around here."

They exited the stairwell, entering the precinct's basement, and walked along a line of holding cells. Bones stopped before the first cell and opened the steel barred door, grinning as he did so. Seifer followed him inside, and shock and relief struck him as he saw Fujin at the back of the cell, sitting up in the far corner.

"Fujin," Seifer whispered, almost unconsciously, as he bolted across the cell and crouched next to her. She was awake and appeared alert, though her single visible eye seemed dull, as if she was still drugged. She appeared unharmed; the enemy hadn't restrained her, and in her current state, she looked so weak and fragile that she probably couldn't resist her captors anyway.

"So, as you can see, she's safe," Bones replied as she reached up, brushing Seifer's face and managing a smile.

"You came," she muttered quietly, and slowly shook her head. "You idiot. You had to come after me, didn't you?"

"This is my fault," Seifer replied, grasping her hand. "I put you through all of this. The assassins, this . . . my fault."

"No," she replied quietly, gripping his hand as tightly as she could. "You, me, and Raijin. We stick together._ Always_."

"Oh, yeah, your buddy Raijin," Bones added with a chuckle, and his gleeful tone caused Seifer to break way from Fujin, to glare at the lunatic behind him. A sudden sense of horror crept over him as he turned, and he then realized that he hadn't heard or seen anything in regards to Raijin at all since he'd gotten the call three hours ago.

"What did you do to him?" Seifer hissed darkly, standing up. His hand drifted toward his gunblade, and outside the cell, the Asp mercenaries raised and leveled their weapons at him. Seifer disregarded them, his fury rising up as Bones calmly drew his katana and held it out before him laterally. Seifer narrowed his eyes as he caught sight of a slight russet stain along the sword's edge.

"He's not dead," Bones remarked offhandedly. "Hospital staff got right to him within moments after we left with your girl. All I did was stab him in the stomach anyway, not a fatal wound . . . though it was _very_ bloody." The smile that stretched across his face as he spoke the last two words was nothing short of insane, and Seifer took a step toward Bones, almost letting his anger seize control.

At that moment, as Seifer advanced toward Bones, Johnson stepped in from the side, barely visible from Seifer's peripheral vision, and thousands of volts of electricity shot through him as a taser jabbed into his ribcage. Seifer's entire body went rigid as lightning pumped through him, every muscle spasming wildly, his teeth chattering and body shaking, and then he collapsed backward, slumping to he floor beside Fujin.

He heard her shout his name, louder than she had any business doing so, and managed to see her pull herself over his collapsed body moments before he blacked out yet again.

----------------

He felt like he's been beaten with a spiked semi-trailer, and his head swam like he was trapped in a flood. Seifer slowly started to regain consciousness, becoming aware of the cold concrete beneath his left cheek, and that he no longer had the reassuring weight of his gunblade or pistol anywhere on his body. He slowly lifted his head up, finding himself on his stomach, and looked around the room.

It was dark, stark, and bare, lit only by a single halogen lamp on the floor. The only feature of the room was a glass window that showed he was on the second floor of the building, an open doorway, and a widely grinning Bones, seated in a chair, twirling his katana between two fingers.

"Yay, you're awake," he remarked, sitting forward. Seifer pushed himself up to his feet, rubbing the back of his head.

"What the hell," he muttered under his breath, and Bones giggled. Seifer looked up at him, and suddenly leaned back instinctively, as the other blonde man's hand shot forward. There was a flash of light, and a burst of minor, biting pain across the bridge of Seifer's nose. Ones leapt up to his feet as Seifer fell back onto his rear, hand going to his nose, and the grinning man before him sheathed his katana.

"The fuck are you doing?" Seifer muttered, pinching his nose.

"Having a bit of fun, is all," Bones answered, pacing around behind his chair. As he moved, Seifer caught sight of something behind the little metal fold-up seat: Hyperion, in its sheath. Bones noted the interest, and scooped up the gunblade.

"This weapon is a thing of beauty, Seifer," he remarked. He drew the gunblade, and looked down its long, slender length, and slid it back into its holster. "I can see you stabbing this is some poor bastard's gut and blowing their varied goopy bits all around the room. I wonder how good you are with it?"

"Hand it over and we'll find out," Seifer replied evenly, as he stood. Bones looked back down at the weapon, and then at Seifer, and then casually tossed it over his shoulder.

"Nah."

_So much for making comic-book villain mistakes._

"Have you let Fujin go?" Seifer asked as he heard the gunblade clatter across the room.

"Maybe," Bones replied with a shrug, his psychotic grin etching across his face. "Maybe not. Doesn't matter now." Seifer narrowed his eyes, and glanced to his gunblade, his mind racing at the implied treachery. With no guarantee that Fujin was going to be safe, he would have to come up with a new plan.

"Why?" Seifer asked, stalling Bones as he started to circle around.

"Why?" Bones echoed, seemingly confused, but nonetheless matching the circular stalk.

"Why do all this?" Seifer clarified. "Why now? Because I'm working with the Hachikyuusan now?" Bones shrugged, and managed a chuckle.

"Seifer, you may think you're important," the other blonde man explained. "But you're not. You're no god among men like you seem to think you are. In fact, you're nothing but a piece of _shit_ who happens to be worth five million gil, dead." Seifer narrowed his eyes as he heard those words, and remembered the indistinct dream or hallucination he'd had after being hurled out of the warehouse.

"_You will be a god among men . . . ." The hell?_

"Then why screw around with me?" Seifer asked, and Bones blinked, before scratching his chin thoughtfully.

"That's a very good question, Seifer," Bones replied, and then, his expression shifted to a mad smile, and he grabbed his skull mask. With a yank, he pulled it down over his head, and hefted his katana's sheath in one hand, grabbing its handle by the other.

"Why _am_ I keeping you alive?" he stepped toward the ex-knight, who dropped into an instinctive defensive stance, trying to figure out how to fight Bones' iaido style with his bare hands. The grinning visage of the dragon skull closed in, and behind it, Seifer could hear the cackling, insane laughter of the mask's wearer as he closed in.

_I have no guarantee that Fujin's getting out of here alive if I die now. I can't let this bastard kill me!_

Bones advanced, hand clenching the katana tightly, and Seifer realized too late that he wasn't close enough to his gunblade for it to matter. Bones' blade quivered, and then leapt out of its sheath, and Seifer could only hurl himself backward, and cold pain shot across his chest. Crimson flew across his vision as he heard Bones' mad laughter, and the ex-knight fell to the cold concrete floor.

"Now, one last thing I need to let you know before I put you out of _my _misery," Bones added with a gleeful tone as he flipped his katana over for a killing stab. He stared down at Seifer from behind his' mask's eyeholes, steel-gray eyes matching Seifer's own with a glint of lunacy.

"The last thing your friend Fujin is going to see are these two eyes, before I drive this blade into her chest, with your blood still on it."

The katana started to drop, and Seifer saw light.

----------------

Fujin had stared helplessly as the enemy had hauled Seifer's body out of the cell, unable to do much of anything in her weakened state. The mercenaries had left her alone in the holding cell after Seifer was carried off, and she could only imagine what they were planning on doing with him.

Even worse, thinking about that was the only thing she _could_ do in her current state. Her arms and legs felt like they were made out of lead, now that she was no longer in the hospital and on medical support. The drugs she was on were slowly wearing off, and a throbbing sensation was working its way into her temples. She tried to stand up, but her legs were unresponsive; it was amazing that she'd even been able to lift her arm and touch Seifer's face moments ago.

Long minutes passed, and she tried to move, to act, to do _something_ other than lay on the floor and curse Seifer for being so stupid as to come after her like this. He had to have known that he was going to be killed, walking in here like that, and it probably wouldn't help her much anyway.

Finally, after long minutes of working her body, she started to make her legs twitch a little bit. Her arms were actually moving more now, but she didn't have a full range of motion yet. She could only hope she got her full ability to move before these bastards had finished with whatever they'd planned with Seifer-

The door into the cell swung open once more, and she looked up, to see the dark-skinned mercenary cop, Johnson, and another Asp mercenary step into the room. Johnson put his hands on his hips and chuckled, shaking his head, as he stared down at her.

"So, what are we going to do with her now?" asked the other mercenary. "Almasy is dead, or at least, he will be when Bones is done with him." Fujin's eye widened in sudden shock and hatred. It was one thing to believe that someone was dead, but to actually have it spoken, and so casually, by that person's killers . . . .

"What do you think?" Johnson replied, glancing back at his subordinate. "Do you think Shiro Matsuda is just going to accept his daughter back with all smiles and forgiveness for our little transgressions? We just fuckin' _kidnapped_ his daughter and then _killed_ his second in command. That man is going to be pissed the _fuck_ off, and you know what that means."

"Street war," remarked the mercenary, nodding, and he smiled darkly. "We finally get to waste the Green Dragons."

"Exactly," Johnson replied, and turned back toward Fujin. "Which is just what this is all about, right? And if we want to set off our little war, then we'll need to make Matsuda _mad."_ Johnson calmly reached down to his belt and drew his sidearm, and crouched down in front of Fujin. The weapon jabbed toward her face, and the barrel pressed against her forehead. She glared at him, showing no fear, and tensed her arms to strike out as best she could.

"You know, maybe we could - son of a bitch!" Johnson recoiled as Fujin clawed her right hand down the front of his face in a vicious flail, blood flying across the cop's cheek and nose as she gouged her fingers as deeply into his flesh as possible. He stood up, clutching his ripped face, and sent a baleful glance back down at the seemingly helpless woman.

Fujin knew it was a futile gesture, but she refused to simply lay back and die, not without fighting back as best she could. It was something Seifer would have approved of, if he wasn't so paralyzed with self-guilt.

"Fuck!" shouted Johnson as he looked at his bloodied hand, and then down at the woman beneath him. With a snarl, he leveled his pistol at Fujin's head once more. "Screw playing around, I'm going to spread your brains all over the fucking floor!"

Then there was sound, and there was light.

----------------

He was pressed against the building wall, feet planted against the concrete exterior. He reached up and tapped his headset as Alpha Three finished setting the flashbang charges against the window. Beside him, the other two members of Alpha Team had finished rappeling down the side of the buildin and were ready to go.

"Alpha, in position. All units report in."

"_Bravo, locked, cocked, and ready to rock, over,"_

"_Charlie, in position and ready to kick ass."_

"_Delta, in position and ready to blow crap up!"_

"Copy that." Alpha leader took a long, slow breath, and released it. "All units, stand by. Stand by . . . Execute."

At that word, there came a chorus of explosions, and the radio as filled with reports from the first seconds of contact as all four units slammed into the building with lightning precision. The squad leaders' particular idioms, however, came in clearly over the radio as Alpha Leader burst through a window amid the chaos.

"_Breaching!"_

"_We're in!"_

"_Whoo-hoo!"_

Alpha leader's boots hit the hard ceramic floor, glass hurtling past him, and sensed the presence of an enemy directly ahead. A man was reeling backward from the flash of light, and the squad leader reached down to his waist, drew his weapon, and cut the man down in an instant of remorseless violence.

----------------

There was a flash, there was noise, and Seifer rolled aside as Bones hesitated for a half-second. His katana stabbed down into the concrete, and Seifer flipped up onto his feet as he heard the masked man's shocked and furious cursing. Gunfire suddenly filled the precinct building as Asp mercenaries realized they were under attack. The reports of gunfire, the explosions of breaching charges and grenades, and the rushing blasts of magic filled the building as Seifer leapt forward into a rising side kick that caught Bones on the side of his mask's jaw and lifted him up, launching him across the room to crash against a wall.

Seifer wasted no time, turning and diving across the bare chamber, and Bones, more angered than dazed by the sudden attack, pushed off the wall and leapt at Seifer, sheathing his katana in a smooth motion. He crossed the room in a single bound, his motions just as fluid and enhanced as Seifer's own, and his blade snapped out in an eye-blink, into a lethal slash-

-and rang as loudly and clearly as a church bell on Sunday morning, the katana's edge meeting and stopping against the long, slender blade of Hyperion.

Seifer's left hand balled into a fist and flashed across into Bones' mask, snapping his head backward and cracking the skull-like visage. The masked man was spun around, and Seifer shot forward into a kick at his side as he turned, launching him back across the room once more. Bones turned his flight into a tumble, and planted his left hand on the floor, turning said tumble into a graceful somersault that ended with both feet on the concrete, his stance balanced, and just in time to parry Seifer's rushing stab. The gunblade ran up the katana's length, and the two blades met at their hilts in a clinch.

Once more, steel-gray eyes crossed over their blades, but now Seifer's no longer showed desperation or fear, and instead burned with anger and the determination to protect those he cared for.

Another explosion shook the building, and Bones let out a quiet, almost _satisfied _laugh.

"Good," he whispered. "I like it when prey fights back . . . means I can make you bleed more."

"Not tonight, asshole," Seifer snapped back, and his right arm surged forward, hurling his opponent backward off his gunblade. Bones burst into laughter as he sheathed his sword, and then leapt at Seifer, katana flying out and slamming against the gunblade, sending vibrations up the hybrid weapon's length and violently shaking Seifer's arm. He snarled in frustrated anger and launched a vicious stab at the masked man as he backed away, and pressed his assault.

_I'm going to smash Hyperion straight through your mask and blast your head to bloody mist, you Hyne-damned giggling motherfucker!_

----------------

In an instant, the entire precinct was bathed in chaos, with a nice marinade of mayhem and a dash of rampant, uncontrolled violence. For Sergeant Johnson and his Asp cronies, however, they were unable to appreciate the succulent dish of pain that their until-moments-previously-hidden enemies had suddenly dropped upon them. They were too busy fighting, screaming, and dying to realize the intricate timing, shocking lethality, and exceptional speed of their enemy as they sliced apart the precinct, dividing it into four separate sectors which each four-man team proceeded to turn into a red-painted morgue.

On the third floor, windows shattered, accompanied by the flashes of stun grenades, and three Asp mercenaries were suddenly dead, gunfire ripping through them in an instant. A fourth man raised his weapon, only to stare down the barrel of a heavy revolver, which one of the intruders whipped into his face almost casually as he passed by. The wide barrel jerked back, and there was a roaring blast that filled the precinct, competing for the ears of all those within among the myriad of other sounds, and then there was silence as Bravo Team swept through the upper floors.

"Bravo, clearing third level."

On the first floor, more windows were shattered, and gunfire split through plaster walls and pierced the bodies of armed and armored mercenaries, who had been bored to tears and instant before. Many of them hadn't had a chance to realize they were being shot at before they were on the floor, bleeding out from a dozen punctures across their bodies. One mercenary, however, dove for cover, only to have the leader of Charlie Team smash through a window overhead and land beside him. The mercenary looked up, and a hand, plated in metal knuckles on a hardened leather backing, smashed into his jaw and shattered it. His body hurtled across the room and into another wall, leaving a deep dent in the plaster and wood.

"Charlie, securing first floor!"

In the basement, a door leading into the holding cell block blew open, and Sergeant Johnson stumbled out of Fujin's cell with the rush of blazing magic filling his ears. One of his mercenaries toppled backward, the front hand of his torso reduced to ash, and he ran up a nearby flight of stairs as more gunfire and magic filled the lower level. As he departed, the four members of Delta Team swept in, checking the fallen bodies of the trio of Asp mercenaries that they had killed, and the individual cells. They paused at Fujin's, and the team leader smashed the door open with a pair of heavy rods attached by a long chain, and entered the cell. She crouched over Fujin as her team secured the stairwell, and quickly hoisted the weakened woman onto her shoulder.

"Delta, we've got the package. Pulling out!"

On the second floor, across the building from where katana and saber-style gunblade were crossing, an Asp mercenary raised his sub-machinegun, only to have a hand clamp down over it. The arm shoved the mercenary's weapon aside, and he managed to get a look at the black-clad, helmeted enemy attacking him before a long blade jabbed into his gut. His attacker, the leader of Alpha Team, depressed the trigger on his weapon, and the mercenary was blasted in half as the rest of Alpha Team charged out of the room and swept the next hallway.

"Alpha, securing second floor," Alpha Leader called over his radio.

Below, Sergeant Johnson could hear more chaos and death all across the precinct as he ducked into an office, where two more of his men were taking cover, one with blood streaming down the side of his head.

"The fuck is going on here?" he demanded, grabbing a shotgun off the back wall of the office and pumping it. "Who the hell are these fuckers?"

The door behind him opened, and a wounded mercenary stumbled inside, his armor and uniform torn and ripped. He fell back against the wall as another soldier moved to his side to help him, blood staining the urban camouflage he wore.

"Sir," he managed to gasp, shaking his head. "They're _SeeDs! Hyne-damned SeeDs_!"

Johnson stared at the mercenary for a moment, and realized with shocked horror that he was right. No one could have struck this suddenly and this lethally outside Garden-trained SeeD forces, and that meant that someone - probably Shiro Matsuda - had the balls _and_ the cash to hire the world's most dangerous military outfit.

"Son of a _bitch_," Johnson muttered, and he moved toward the office's windows. His shotgun's butt smashed into the glass, shattering it, and he started climbing out. "Like _hell_ I'm sticking around to tangle with some motherfucking SeeDs. Pull out! Everyone get the hell out of here!"

----------------

Katana rang against gunblade, and Bones rushed ahead, laughing like the madman he apparently was. His sword scraped against Seifer's weapon, and he dropped his sheath as he advanced, the scabbard clattering to the floor. His katana rose and fell in a sudden assault of manic attacks, Bones hacking away with two-handed swings as he completely abandoned any pretense of defense. Hyperion worked furiously before Seifer as he fought off the assault, wondering what the hell had gotten into his enemy. Even in the throes of his madness under Ultimecia's servitude, Seifer hadn't been this suicidal, especially with such a light weapon unsuited to this kind of berserk charge.

Nonetheless, the masked man kept hacking away, his laughter ringing in Seifer's ears as slender blade slammed against slender blade. Seifer gave ground, the clash of blades assaulting his ears and his feet slipping along the concrete floor as he thought frantically for a way to counter this new assault. Behind his mask, Seifer could see Bones' eyes widened in insane, illogical glee, like he was high on some kind of psychotic stimulant drug.

"Bleed for me, Seifer!" Bones screamed as he chopped and hacked. "Bleed and die!" His laughter hit new octaves as he attacked, and Seifer suddenly shifted gears. Bones' katana dropped down upon Hyperion, which caught the strike. Even as Bones retracted his weapon for another hack, however, Seifer leapt forward, reversing his momentum and rising into a knee to the gut. Seifer's leg buried into the masked man's gut, and he doubled over. Without missing a beat, Seifer's left arm shot up in a massive uppercut that cracked into the lunatic's mask, snapping his head backward and lifting him up into the air. As he rose, the ex-knight hopped up, his right leg flying across in a wild kick that impacted into Bones' side with a bone-cracking collision.

The masked madman went flying across the room, skidding across the concrete floor and slamming into a wall. Roaring in a mixture of elation and rage, he shoved himself off the wall, raising his blade. He looked up, and saw Seifer closing in. Gripping his sword in both hands, Bones rushed toward Seifer, preparing for a lethal overhead cleave. His katana descended as Seifer rushed in, and slashed through the air in its descent.

Unfortunately, it _only_ sliced air, as Seifer stopped his rush a hairsbreadth short of the cutting blade.

The katana passed before Seifer, and he stomped down on it, driving the descending blade into the concrete floor, and Hyperion jabbed ahead, stabbing into Bones' gut. He blanked behind his mask as Seifer drove his weapon deeper, almost up to the hilt, the weapon bursting out the man's back.

Seifer met Bones' masked eyes for an instant, and without blinking, he pulled the weapon's trigger, sending a sonic charge down the weapon's length and out the masked man's back, blasting his innards into mist and sloshing crimson liquid. Bones fell backward, and slumped against the wall, his clothes darkening with his own flowing blood.

Seifer calmly extracted his gunblade from the messy remains of his foe, and turned around, snapping his arm out and whipping the blood off Hyperion with a simple gesture.

"You first," he muttered under his breath, and walked across the room, toward the entrance into the room. A sudden peal of gunfire assaulted his ears, very close, and for the first time Seifer had been able to focus on the sounds around him, and realized that someone was attacking the precinct. He had no idea who it was, but he remembered what Shiro had declared hours ago, and cursed under his breath.

_If Shiro committed the Hachikyuusan to open warfare, this city will be burning before tomorrow night. Shit._

Seifer moved toward the door, wondering how many men that Shiro had deployed, and started to move outside, wary of any ambush by Asp soldiers. He had to get to Fujin, before any of these bastards could try and harm her. He had no idea whether any of them possessed morals akin to Bones' outlook on life. That thought made Seifer glance back over his shoulder at Bones' corpse to make sure that he was, in fact, still dead.

A cracked, bone-white dragon mask with insane, gleeful steel-gray eyes awaited him instead.

"Hi there."

Instinct and reflex alone saved Seifer as he snapped Hyperion up, the gunblade stopping a sudden slash by Bones' katana - _how the _fuck - the two blades ringing as he was shoved backward into the hallway outside. Seifer skipped backward, his mind suddenly racing as Bones rushed into the hallway after him, laughing madly. The ex-knight looked down at Bones' torso, to see the grapefruit-sized hole he had blasted no longer there, replaced by perfectly unblemished flesh beneath the ragged hole torn in his black shirt.

"What the hell-" Seifer hissed out loud as his gunblade met Bones' weapon, and the insane masked man leaned in closer, giggling cries burying into the ex-knight's mind as his mask nearly touched Seifer's face. He whispered something under his breath, but somehow Seifer was able to hear every syllable perfectly.

"_You will be a god among men,"_ he hissed, and burst into another stream of laughter, shoving Seifer back.

Seifer skidded away across the floor, toward a window overlooking the street below, and then shot forward, Hyperion knocking Bones' weapon aside and slashing across his torso. Blood burst from the wound, and he heard Bones hiss in pain as he chopped down with his katana, nearly severing Seifer's extended sword hand. Seifer watched the blood fly out, and then, as he stared, the dark wound started to simply _vanish_, the cut sealing up almost as quickly as Seifer had inflicted it. The masked man stopped in place, looking down at his injury, and then back up at Seifer.

"Sorry, Seifer," he replied shaking his head. "Not going to work on me. You can't kill me with that puny thing." He clenched his katana in both hands. "Good news is, _I_ can kill _you._"

Seifer raised his weapon, wondering how the hell Bones was regenerating his wounds, when there was a stream of gunfire from down the hallway, and an Asp mercenary pitched into the hallway behind the masked freak. Bones glanced back over his shoulder, and Seifer bolted in during the instant of hesitation. Bones turned back in time to see Hyperion drive into his gut once more, impaling the masked man in the exact same place he'd been struck before.

Bones grunted in pain, and looked down at the wound, and then at Seifer. He heard the man sigh behind his mask, as if running out of patience.

"You already tried that on me once," he remarked, and Seifer responded by flexing his muscles and _lifting_ the masked man off his feet. He then sup around, toward the window behind him, and snapped his arm across.

"Okay, that's new-"

The rest of Bones' words were cut off as he smashed into and then through the glass window. He plummeted down two stories to the pavement below, glass embedded in his body as he smashed into the asphalt below with a wet impact. Seifer rushed to the window, and watched as the masked lunatic slowly stood up, shaking his head, blood pooling on the concrete from his stomach injury, which even then was sealing shut.

After a moment of disorientation, the masked man looked up at Seifer's position up above, and then pulled his mask off his face. The ex-knight glared down into his enemy's eyes as he frowned, and advanced toward the building, undeterred.

"Do you think this is it?" he shouted up at the ex-knight, walking forward, brandishing his blade. "That tossing me out a window is going to stop me from killing you? You're going to die, Seifer, and so is your bitch and that fucking Hachi boss that hired you-"

His words were cut off as, from one of the building's windows, a stream of icy spears lanced out and stabbed into his torso, lifting him up and launching him backward. Seifer narrowed his eyes, recognizing that type of magic, and a sudden realization as to who Shiro had sent to help him crept into his mind.

"Motherfucker!" Bones shouted, standing up, the icy spears sticking out of stomach and torso at various angles. "I'm in the middle of something, you stupid pieces of-"

Lightning cascaded into his body, tossing the man backward off his feet once more, and several black-clad figures rushed into the street, brandishing rifles and bladed melee weapons as Bones stood. One of them gestured forcefully at the impaled man, and a bolt of flame burned into his chest as he rose, staggering him. But, like with all the other spells and savagery that had been dealt to him, Bones seemed to barely feel the attacks as he straightened.

"Okay, screw this," he muttered as the riflemen sighted him. He turned and ran down an alley as gunfire pursued, his voice echoing out the entrance as he retreated. "Seifer! You're _dead_, you hear me! I'm coming back for you!"

As Bones' voice faded, and the intruders who had been attacking him retreated back into the building, Seifer heard boots moving along the concrete floor behind him, and slowly turned. His suspicions were verified as he looked at the quartet of individuals in the hallway behind him, fifteen feet away, with weapons leveled at the ex-knight. Seifer traced his eyes over them, and then focused on the leader of the four-man team.

Seifer had been expecting SeeDs, but he certainly didn't expect to see the man leading this SeeD unit. It took him a second to recognize who he was facing, but the smaller man's height, his build, the heavy cleaving gunblade he gripped in his hands, and most prominently, the scar tracing between his eyes firmly confirmed the SeeD's identity.

Seifer wasn't sure whether to curse or laugh at the irony of his situation.

"Seifer," muttered the man as he lowered his heavy gunblade. He narrowed his eyes at the drastic change in his appearance, but recognized the scar between his eyes.

"Hyne-dammit," Seifer hissed, shaking his head. "Not only is it fucking _SeeDs_, but its _you_ too?"

"Two years and you still haven't learned to appreciate help," remarked Squall Leonhart, with a tone of angry bitterness in his voice. Seifer blinked at the accusing tone in his old rival's voice, and sighed, shaking his head. After a couple of moments, he managed to force out something he never thought he'd say to anyone, let alone Squall.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Fujin?"

"She's safe," Squall responded. Relief flooded through Seifer, and he managed to smile slightly, his muscles relaxing in an instant. His gunblade almost fell out of his hand at the news.

"Thank Hyne," Seifer whispered. He opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated, before finally speaking. " . . . thank you."

"Her father paid us to pull her out," Squall explained. "And to not kill you while we were doing it." Seifer chuckled darkly at those words, and met Squall's gaze.

"Would you have shot me?" he asked after several moments, and Squall was silent, noncommittal, as usual when it came to thorny decisions like that. Seifer could tell he was mulling it over in his mind, but the SeeD kept his thoughts to himself, as usual.

"Can I go now?" he asked after getting tired of waiting for an answer, and Squall nodded, stepping aside.

"Fujin is downstairs with Selphie's team, out back," he explained. "We've already called GCPD they're coming to pick her up and take her back to the hospital. We're pulling out now, and I'd suggest you do the same."

"Giving me advice, Squall?" Seifer asked with a chuckle, and he shook his head.

"Take it or ignore it," the SeeD replied. "Whatever. Do what you want, Seifer."

"I always do," he responded, as the SeeDs turned and disappeared. After a few moments, Seifer followed them out of the building, stepping over the bloodied remains of the Asp mercenaries who had stood and fought against their sudden onslaught. Moments later, he was outside, where two SeeDs, one of them small and petite, with curly brown hair and bright green eyes, were tending to Fujin, who was laying against the side of the building. Selphie Tilmitt looked up as Seifer approached, and backed away slightly at the presence of his gunblade, not sure what to do in his presence.

"Is she okay?" he asked after a second, and Selphie nodded.

"She's weak, but healthy," the small SeeD replied. She glanced back up at him, not certain how he'd react to her. Unlike her comrades, she didn't have a personal involvement with him; in alternate circumstances, they could almost have been friends.

As she spoke, Fujin managed to look up at Seifer, who crouched down beside her and set his weapon on the pavement. He reached forward and grasped her shoulders, and as Selphie watched, he smiled. Not a smirk or a superior grin, but a real _smile._ He looked up at Selphie, and nodded.

"Thank you," he managed to say, and she nodded back. She gestured her comrade, who stood up, and both SeeDs vacated the area, understanding this important moment of privacy between the pair.

Moments later, Selphie had rejoined the rest of the sixteen-SeeD unit as they slipped off into the city through the back alleys, toward the rendezvous point where the Ragnarok was going to pick their team up and ferry them back to Balamb Garden. As she rejoined the group, she could hear one of the other team leaders speaking.

"So, we just let him go?" asked Zell Dincht, frowning in disapproval, and Squall nodded.

"There's no reason to bother him," he replied evenly. Zell glanced to Irvine Kinneas as Selphie slipped in next to him, but the sharpshooter said nothing; he and Selphie had the least personal connections to the ex-cadet, and had no personal stake in this conversation.

"But," Zell began to say, but Squall cut him off.

"Garden and Seifer are finished," he replied firmly, almost _coldly_. "We don't have any business with him any more. Whatever has happened between us is over, and it was over when we finished Ultimecia. As far as Garden, _and we_, are concerned, Seifer is just another discharged cadet." Zell looked like he wanted to protest, but finally went silent.

"Okay, Squall," he muttered after a moment. "If that's how you want to deal with it . . . ."

----------------

"Will you be okay?" Seifer asked Fujin, and she nodded slightly.

"I'm fine," she replied. She glanced up, as the sounds of sirens could be heard in the distance. "You . . . should leave." Seifer hesitated, and then moved his hands along her chin, before sighing.

"You're right," he replied, and took one of her hands in his own, and squeezed it. "I'll be waiting for you at the hospital, okay?" She nodded, and he started to pull away, before stopping. Fujin gave him a quizzical look, and then, acting entirely on impulse, he leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.

It was quick, and if Fujin had been any less aware of her surroundings, she might have passed it off as a hug or something similar, but there was no mistaking what he had just done. She stared at him as he leaned back, and then stood up, not letting her out of his sight as he ran over to his motorcycle.

Finally, Seifer broke eye contact as his bike started up, and he pulled out, driving down the street and out of sight, moments before the first police cars pulled up outside the precinct as the dark amber sunrise started to spread over Galbadia City.

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**A/N:** Well, that took me a while to finish. There was a _lot_ going on in this chapter that I needed to cover, not the least of which was the cameo by our intrepid heroes, which took a lot of work to write properly. I hope I applied the proper emotions in this chapter; I've been pretty drained lately.

For reference, _chikushyo teine_ is a general Japanese curse, roughly equivilant to "son of a bitch" or "fucking bastard." _Kuso_ means "damn" or "dammit." Don't ever say I wasn't educational :P

Next chapter, expect a _lot_ of plot to be revealed and a lot of questions to be answered. There's only a few chapters left for Ronin now...

Until next chapter...


	8. Seventh Job: Truth

"_Excuse me?" called a voice, and the black-haired woman turned, to see another young woman, blonde, dressed in relatively plain clothes. She was carrying a bundle in her arms, and it took only a moment for the black-haired woman to realize it was a very young child._

"_Are you . . . Edea Kramer?" the woman asked hesitantly, and the young Sorceress nodded in response._

"_yes, I am," she replied, and walked over to the blonde woman, looking down at the child. The woman seemed to relax, though she quickly looked over her shoulder as Edea approached._

"_I've heard you run an orphanage, far south of here," she said quickly and quietly, and looked around again. Edea paused, alarm bells going off in her mind at the woman's strange body language. She slowly began to invoke her powers, quietly scanning the area around her for potential threats._

"_Yes, I do," Edea replied, and looked again to the child. It seemed to be a baby boy, with the faintest whisper of blonde hair growing on his head. The Sorceress already knew what this woman wanted, and wondered if she was simply trying to get rid of the child or was looking for a home for him._

"_Please," she whispered, "Can you take him?" She looked around once more, and Edea caught a glint of something in her eye._

_Fear._

"_What is wrong?" she asked, glancing about as well, and widening her scan. She detected no threats, but that did not dispel the warning senses that were flaring up. "Is there something wrong with this child?"_

"_I . . ." the blonde woman hesitated, and then shook her head. "You're better off not knowing. Please, you must take him. I can't be seen with him." She held the child out to Edea, and she waited only a moment before reaching out and folding the baby up into her arms. She sensed that arguing with this woman would be a mistake, and the urgency and fear in her tone made the Sorceress concerned for the child's safety._

"_I will," she replied, looking down at the child in her hands. "Do not worry. But, what is his name?"_

"_They . . . I mean, I never gave him one," the other woman replied after a second. "His mother never got a chance to name him either . . . ."_

"_What was her name?" Edea asked._

"_Kathryn," the blonde woman replied. "Kathryn Almasy. Why?"_

"_That is a Dollet name," Edea whispered, and looked at the child. "I will call him by one as well . . . ." She paused, considering a name for the baby boy in her hands. After a few moments, an appropriate one came to mind._

"_Seifer," she finished and nodded. "Seifer Almasy." Edea turned her gaze back up toward the woman. "Do not worry," she assured her. "I will take good care of him."_

_**Job Seven: Truth**_

Galbadia City was littered with office buildings, including one that belonged to an electronics company that had moved in from Esthar by the name of Futabishi. It was a reasonably successful company in the burgeoning Galbadian market, and there was a lot of traffic coming and going from the building at all hours of the day.

What was not well-known was that Futabishi, aside from being a successful Estharian electronics company, was also owned and operated by the Green Dragons sect of the Hachikyuusan in Galbadia. Thus, not only was the building housing numerous executives, engineers, and desk jockeys for the company, but it also served as the main front for Green Dragon operations in Galbadia City. The top floor of the building, six stories up, was reserved exclusively for Dragon operations, and one of the offices had been reserved for a newly minted member of the organization.

"So, what do you think?" asked Shiro Matsuda, as Seifer walked around the room. He looked around the chamber, an office, and his eyes traced over the blood red wallpaper, and the ornate golden dragon statues in each corner of the room, snaking and twisting. He walked around behind the desk, and slowly turned the expensive, wheeled leather chair around and sat down. He turned the swiveling chair toward the mob boss, leaned back, and set his feet up on the mahogany.

"Fuckin' awesome," He replied with a wide grin, gesturing outward with his arms.

"Glad to hear it," replied Shiro, nodding. "Today, you are officially my _saiko-komon,_ and possess all the responsibilities and privileges that such a position grants. And personally, I would have it no other way."

"Even if I did tell you to fuck off with your first order?" Seifer asked, and Shiro chuckled.

"Your actions were selfless and surprisingly forward-thinking, even if you didn't anticipate treachery," Shiro replied. "I like that. I need someone who can be assertive and quick. We'd rather think fast and act immediately than hesitate and lose the initiative."

"Then you've come to the right man," replied Seifer. "Speaking of which . . . How is Fujin doing?"

"Better," replied Shiro. "I know you can't be seen anywhere near her right now, but she is fine. She started walking again yesterday, and the doctors expect a full recovery by the end of the week."

"And the cops?" Seifer asked, to which Shiro waved a hand dismissively.

"They're too busy tearing apart the Asp precinct and picking up all the evidence of their illicit activities," Shiro replied. "A couple of wads of cash here and there and the police turned a blind eye as to why Fujin was there in the first place. Right now, they're still trying to figure out who killed the mercenaries and why."

"About that," Seifer muttered. "How much did it cost you to call in _SeeD_?"

"Jealous, Seifer?" Shiro asked with a smile, to which Seifer shook his head.

"No, just curious," he replied. "How much?"

"That's irrelevant, really," Shiro responded, shaking his head. "SeeD was necessary, and I spent the money for their services."

"Plausible deniability in a nice, neat package," Seifer added, shaking his head. "I didn't think of pulling that idea, honestly. Though I think if SeeD knew they were going to be helping _me_ before they took the contract, then I think they might have backed out."

"Not really," Shiro replied, shaking his head. "I would have just had to offer them more money. They are, after all, mercenaries. Pay them enough and they'll take any job."

"Don't confuse SeeD for Asp," Seifer replied quickly. "Maybe back when NORG was in charge, they may have killed anyone for a few bucks, but with Squall in charge over there . . . ."

"If you say so," Shiro admitted. "It doesn't matter much, anyway." He paused as his cell phone began to vibrate, and took it out. "_Moshi-moshi? Hai. Hai. Dokudeska? Kuso . . . Hai. Watashiwa itekudesne. Ja ne."_ He shut the phone and slid it back into his pocket, and Seifer raised an eyebrow. He didn't know much Estharian, but caught the use of "kuso," and that wasn't good.

"Something wrong?" he asked, and Shiro shook his head.

"Nothing serious," he replied as he moved toward the door. "I have something I need to look into. I'll see you later then, eh, _saiko-komon?_"

"Sure thing," Seifer replied, and Shiro nodded, before disappearing out the doorway and leaving the new Hachikyuusan boss behind his desk.

Silence filled Seifer's new office, and he slowly grinned as he leaned back. As he sat there, he felt the exhaustion and stress roll off his body, as if it was a tangible thing that was being shed. He was no longer bound by his past, and instead had risen beyond the hell he'd been through in the last few months. Finally, he was at peace.

Of course, that wasn't likely to last; he had undeniable responsibility now, and his head was still being hunted - Bones, Johnson, and the Anarak Syndicate would all need to be dealt with eventually - but now he was able to match those threats on even footing, with the entire weight of the Green Dragons at his disposal.

But yet, there was one thing other than those threats on his mind, and he found himself idly playing with his gunblade as he thought of it. The hospital, the warehouse, and now the road leading through the Auburn District . . . Those events were stuck in his mind, and refused to escape. The visions and the men falling to the ground, their flesh boiling away, were sights that he couldn't banish. And in all honesty, Seifer Almasy wasn't one to back down from a mystery like this if it was presented to him.

Thus it was that he sat behind his desk, Hyperion lazily tracing arcs and slices through the air, thinking about the three incidents wherein he had encountered the _thing_ in the Auburn District. The first time, while fleeing police who were shooting at him, the second time while escaping an Anarak ambush, and the third time while driving to a meeting which was surely going to spell his death. Though the incidents in question had certainly been shocking and terrifying, Seifer began to realize a surprising thread of similarity to those events.

In all three incidents, Seifer had been under attack, or was in eminent danger of being injured or killed. And in the first two incidents, the responses had been the same. In fact, the intervention of the strange ghost had only occurred _after_ Seifer had been shot, in both incidents. Then, immediately after spotting the ghost in the warehouse, he had been hurled from the building, as if the ghost was trying to remove him from the assassin-filled structure. And the motorcycle incident . . . . The voice that had played in his mind echoed once more, and he understood then and there that the ghost had thrown him off his bike not out of malice, but to prevent him from driving to his death.

Hyperion stopped its motions, and Seifer sat forward, a single thought flashing into his mind as he understood what had been happening this whole time.

_That ghost wasn't attacking me. She was _protecting _me._

The thought sent a chill up his spine, and generated a hundred questions in is mind, first and foremost as to _why_ that thing would be protecting him.

Five minutes of furious pondering yielded no results, and for Seifer Almasy, stubborn and aggressive as he was, thinking for that length of time and not finding an answer was unacceptable. Hell, thinking that long about _anything_, period, was unheard of for the ex-knight. Rather than spend more time unnecessarily pondering this strange turn of events, Seifer instead slid Hyperion into its sheath and stood up from behind his desk. He snapped the gunblade around his waist, threw on his black jacket, and strode out of his red-wallpapered office.

The two bodyguards outside looked up in confusion as Seifer strode past them, and started to follow, when he waved over his shoulder, ordering them to stay put.

"I'll be back in a bit," he grunted as he strode down the hallway, passing by Hachikyuusan associates and soldiers as he descended toward the parking garage. Within moments, the new mob boss was out in the underground parking lot, and seated on his bike. The black motorcycle revved, and Seifer gunned his vehicle out of the garage and onto the darkening streets of Galbadia City.

He had no immediate concerns, no responsibilities, and a whole lot of questions that needed answering, right the hell now, and he was going to find out the truth, _right the hell now._

* * *

It was nighttime, and the city was full of cars and people. Neon lights flashed past as Seifer drove down the city streets, weaving in and out of traffic. Something in the back of his mind told him that now, he practically owned these streets, as Shiro's second in command. The thought that he once more held a position of undeniable power sent a smile across the ex-knight's features as he cut past a double-decker bus. 

In his ear, the earpiece radio he wore that connected to the local radio stations buzzed, and he turned up the volume.

"_In a startling discovery, Galbadia City Police Department officials discovered an encryption key that allowed them to decode the final hard drives that were recovered from the razed police precinct three days previously. Among the data recovered were the lists of dozens of contacts and suppliers in the unofficial drug trade that local Asp contract officers were involved with. This data, in conjunction with the reams of evidence collected from the contractor precinct building three days ago has prompted President Caraway to indefinitely suspend Asp's contract to provide policing services in Galbadia City. He is cited as, and I quote, "refusing to allow contract soldiers to commit more crimes upon the city than they prevent." Further developments are expected in this scandal."_

Seifer frowned as he listened. While it was good news that the Asp bastards were no longer on the streets, and thus removing the last vestiges of Johnson's threats against him, the fact that Johnson himself had not been mentioned in any of the reports thus far bothered him. It wasn't due to a lack of coverage, either; the media outlets were all over this story. Shiro had said it was even on the news in Esthar.

_Slippery bastard._

Seifer knew he would have to deal with Johnson eventually. He understood that type of person, and knew that the cop would eventually come after him at some point, likely with conventional police forces instead of mercenaries. And if that was the case, Seifer and his people may end up going up against honest police officers and not amoral snake-eaters . . . and the last thing Seifer wanted was to kill more honest cops. The quickest way to prevent this was to eliminate Johnson from the equation, and quickly.

And as for the other enemy he would have to deal with, Bones . . . First, Seifer needed to know what he was dealing with there in the first place. Not even a powerful regenerative spell could heal wounds as quickly and seamlessly as what Bones had done. Figuring out where he came from and whatever the hell happened to him were top priorities; if Seifer couldn't kill him, then there was no way to stop the bastard, especially considering how blatantly psychotic he was.

But answering any of these questions was secondary to the much greater dilemma he was posed with: what the hell was up with that ghost, and why was she protecting him? And those visions, the words spoken by that man in his dream, echoed by Bones himself . . . .

In order to figure out the how and why, Seifer decided to go straight to the source, and the place where he'd first encountered the freakish nightmare: Auburn, and the old hospital.

The lights died down, and the traffic faded away, and before he knew it, Seifer was traveling down worn roads and past rusted signs, with crumbling, empty buildings rising up around him on all sides. His motorcycle cut through the abandoned roads and around corners, and within a few minutes, he rolled through the empty gateway and into the parking lot of the ancient hospital where this freaky phenomena had begun in the first place.

Seifer dismounted, and pulled out his flashlight, and delved once again into the condemned hospital, to learn the truth, whatever it may be.

* * *

The upstairs of the hospital had already been explored on his previous venture, but as Seifer crept into the hospital, a nagging feeling told him that something of greater importance was lurking _downstairs_, as opposed to the upper reaches of the building. Thus it was that as Seifer reached the staircase behind the receptionist's desk that he had used a few days previously, the ex-knight took the lower of the two routes. Moments later, he had reached the hospital's basement levels, and instinct told him to go as low as he could. Seifer did just that, following the stairwell down as far as it would go. He passed three doors leading into basement levels before reaching the bottom of the staircase, and a heavy-duty door that was unlocked and marked with numerous biohazard signs. Not one to be deterred by decades-old warnings, Seifer pushed the door open and walked through. 

Seifer stepped slowly into the basement, hand on his gunblade. He swept the interior of the empty room, and saw no immediate threats. In fact, he saw nothing, his flashlight only sweeping across swirling dust and empty darkness. This room was featureless and barren, with nothing worth noting.

Then why did he feel like something of incredible importance was waiting down here for him?

He edged across the empty chamber, light flashing back and forth, and spotted a desk in a back corner of the room, next to a doorway. He moved toward it, and noted a laptop sitting on the desk. It was old, and the plastic shell was cracked and broken, but as he neared it, he saw that it was still plugged into the wall. Not that it would do him a lot of good; there was no power running to the Auburn District anymore. He reached for the laptop anyway, to take it and peruse the files later. It might have something useful on it, he guessed.

_Thwoom._

Seifer jerked backward as the laptop _started up._ He stared down at the device for a second as the lights on the computer's exterior began to glow, and then, after a couple of seconds, the flipped it open. There, despite all measures of sanity and logic, was the laptop's login screen, visible despite the fact that there was no power to run the damn thing.

More importantly, the laptop's login screen already showed an asterisked name and password, and Seifer knew no one was stupid enough to leave such valuable login data present on a PC with anything important on it.

So, why did he have the gnawing feeling that this laptop contained the answers he needed?

Seifer tapped the "Enter" key, and the computer beeped. A moment later, flashing static shot across the screen, and after several seconds, a blank gray desktop became visible, with no icons outside of the most basic ones. He frowned, and shook his head. Someone had wiped all the data on this computer, naturally. Undeterred, he tapped a few more keys, pulling up a general directory. This, too, was unsuccessful, he noted, and then he pulled up a data recovery tool. He started running it, and stepped away from the PC while it tried to recover any intact data.

Seifer reached for the doorway next to the desk , and found it opened easily. He found himself staring down a hallway, a long, blank tile one, and with a sudden pulse of his heart, he realized that this hallway was the same one he had stood in during his vision while being thrown from the motorcycle.

He advanced down the corridor, his muscles tensed and ready to explode at the slightest provocation. His boots resounded down the long, blank hallway as he walked forward, one foot in front of the other, his flashlight playing across the tile walls and over the door at the far end of the corridor. He reached it and his right hand closed around the handle, his left gripping the flashlight so tightly that the plastic was bending under the pressure in his fingers.

The door opened, and empty darkness and stale air greeted him as he walked into the room beyond. It was as blank as the outside, lined in white tile, and relatively small. There was no hospital equipment in it, nothing that looked like it would have been used in some diabolical experiment, but all the same, the ex-knight sensed a powerful presence in this room. It closed in around him, almost suffocating Seifer where he stood, smothering him. He slowly turned, his flashlight moving around the darkened room, and it stopped as it passed over a corner. There, laying in the corner, was a discarded manila folder.

Seifer stepped over to it gingerly and lifted it up. He opened the small folder, flashlight trembling in his other hand as he read the contents. Only a few parts were visible, the rest blanked out by what looked like dark bloodstains.

_**Medical Report #445-A21-71/Classified/Eyes Only**_

_**Subject: Birth of Subject Alpha-0001**_

_**Date: 12/22/3982**_

_**Presiding Personnel: Ball, M.D. Alexandria, D.**_

_**Parent: Almasy, Kathryn Y.**_

That name sent a spasm through Seifer, and the manila folder fell from his fingertips and to the floor. It was just as well; the rest of the file was illegible. He stood there for a moment, staring at nothing in particular, his mind racing with the name of the parent specified in that report.

_Impossible. No way. No way in _hell.

There was a sudden, cheery "ding!" from outside, and Seifer realized that the data recovery system had finished running. He turned and ran down the corridor to the room outside, spinning around as he neared the laptop.

Two files had been recovered, both video logs; nothing else was intact enough for the data recovery program to piece together. He opened the first one. A window popped up, and a moment later, a brown-haired man appeared, a pair of dark-rimmed glasses on his elderly face. He settled back into his chair, and stared at the screen, and at Seifer.

"_Subject Alpha 0001 has shown little to no potential as a successful product of The Womb. Preliminary analysis shows that he has exhibited no unique abilities or features in the four months since his birth on December 12. In fact, the only noteworthy effects of his birth is that Kathryn seems to be getting more agitated, even while sedated. We are considering disposing of him, though Doctor Alexandria is insisting we keep him around for further observation. I have reminded her, repeatedly, that available literature in regards to the children of Sorceresses indicates that their unique abilities manifest within the first six months, and that afterward, without manifested capabilities, then there will be no unique powers."_

The man paused, and glanced at his notes.

"_In the meantime, we will keep him under observation regardless, just in case. Kathryn has already been impregnated once again, with a differing genetic sample, and is currently in the Womb now with her current load of test subjects, Alpha-0002 and Alpha-0003. We anticipate birth by October of this year."_

The man paused, and took off his glasses.

"_I do apologize, sir, for the lack of available progress. You should give President Deling my deepest apologies for this failure thus far. Doctor Ball, signing out."_

Seifer watched the video go black, and then immediately moved toward the second file.

_A name, dammit. I need a _name. _Who the hell is this woman with _my _last name?_

This time, a blonde-haired woman appeared, much younger than the doctor from the previous video. She looked over her notes again, and faced the camera, and started speaking, in a much less clinical tone.

"_Kathryn was angry today. She was expressing outrage that her children were being taken from her, and she wanted to see them. We had to apply a second set of Odine restraints to keep her from wrecking the lab. She's getting inconsolable now, and has started naming the children. I think she's fortunate that she doesn't know exactly what we're putting those children through . . . ."_

The woman hesitated, and then closed her eyes, before continuing.

"_As I expected, Alpha-0001 hasn't shown any supernatural abilities like we've expected. In fact, he's showing a remarkable vulnerability to psionic effects and mental influences from outside forces. But, we've found his mental acuity is above average, and his spatial senses are incredible. He learns fast and thinks quickly, even for a two-year-old. It almost looks like he's born to be a tactician, or a fighter. _

"_Alpha-0002, however, has some shocking abilities which are overshadowing 01's mental development. We've noted that there appears to be no limit to what he is capable of surviving. Doctor Ball is ordering some . . . very sadistic stuff here, including the use of a ten gauge shotgun and nerve gas, and he seems to be either ignoring the effects or regenerating the damage at an incredible rate. We've noticed that he still feels pain, though, and . . . ."_

The woman broke off, shook her head, and then continued.

"_Alpha-0003 is still an unknown. She's not showing any immediately apparent abilities, but we've noted parts of her brain are developing differently, and she's showing a remarkable capacity for what we suspect is the preliminary stages of Bl-"_

The video froze, and then a "corruption error" message appeared on the screen.

Silence still held its death grip on the basement as Seifer stood there, staring at the screen. He didn't move, and didn't blink, despite the dust in the air.

To come this close, only to not have anything truly confirmed . . . .

Something shifted, and Seifer straightened. He started to reach for his gunblade, but then stopped, understanding, somewhere deep down inside, that he didn't need it, and that he wasn't in any real danger anymore. Slowly, the ex-knight turned, and as he did so, his eyes fell upon what stood before him, and he hesitated, not certain what to do or say.

The specter from the last few days stood less than ten feet away, blood-red eyes peering through limp, dirty-blonde hair hanging down past her face. The emotionless face was as a mask of blankness as the child watched him, their eyes meeting. No fear moved through the ex-knight as he studied the child's features, and tried to understand what it was that he was dealing with here. Long, eternal seconds stretched by, marked only by silence and stillness.

"Kathryn?" he finally asked, his voice splitting the heavy air like a thunderbolt.

There was another long moment of emptiness, and Seifer watched the girl carefully. He thought he saw something shift, something different in the way her lips moved, and realized with a start that they had curved upward slightly, as if exuding the faintest of smiles.

Then, everything went black.

"_So, this is Alpha 01?"_

_The man stared down at the bundle in his hands. White light shone down from above, washing everything out, beyond this pale-skinned, blonde man. There were strong hands, cradling from below, and the man looked down with cold, callous eyes at what he held. _

_There was a scream from nearby, and he glanced at the person crying, the woman across the room. He nodded to an orderly._

"_Get her cleaned up," he shouted over her screams. "Take her back to the Womb." The lights overhead flickered, and he scowled. "And make sure the anti-magic field is working until we can drug her. Sorceresses are dangerous, you know that." He looked down to what he held in his hands, understanding what he cradled._

_The man slowly turned, still holding the bundle in one hand, and picked up a manila folder. He glanced over it, and at the child, and as he did so, the top of the file in the folder became visible for an instant. It was distant, but unmistakable._

_**Almasy, Kathryn Y.**_

"_This one," he whispered, nodding. "Yes. You. You will be a god among men . . . ."_

And then the white light faded, and he was back in the basement, dust clogging his vision briefly as the name burned itself into his mind.

She spoke, her voice in his ear. This was no longer the quiet, indistinct echo in his mind, but what felt like an actual voice touching his ears.

"_You know who you are?"_

He was silent for a long moment, and looked around the room. He saw no ghost, no flames, nothing but dust and emptiness.

"Yes," Seifer finally said, nodding. "I do now."

And as he spoke those words, the weight of omnipresence faded from the basement, and left it truly empty. He once more turned, peering across the room, and could tell that Kathryn's presence had faded, receding like an outgoing tide, leaving him alone.

_So, this is how it ended up?_

There was nothing more for him in this basement. He knew, and understood, what the specter's purpose was, even if he didn't have solid proof of what she had been. And now he knew why she had been protecting him all this time.

"I don't know what happened down here," he spoke to the emptiness. "I don't know why they did this to you, or why I was . . . ." Seifer paused, and shook his head. "But I will find out what this was all about, I assure you . . . Kathryn."

With those words, the ex-knight turned toward the exit and started toward it. After a couple of steps, he paused, and looked back toward the laptop. That contained all the data that remained from . . . whatever had been happening down here. The only record of what had happened.

Seifer pointed a hand toward it and discharged a blast of flame, the fire magic striking the laptop dead center and setting it ablaze in a shower of sparks and molten electronics.

He stared at the minute destruction for several long moments, not sure why he just did that, beyond the fact that it felt _right_ to remove all record of what had happened. There was nothing else to be gained here for anyone save himself, and Seifer didn't want to leave any evidence of his presence behind.

His mission here completed, the ex-knight started out of the basement and back up into the open night air of Galbadia City, leaving the hospital and its ghosts behind. Minutes later, he was standing in the parking lot of the metropolis, and turned his eyes up toward the night sky. He stared at the silvery disk of the moon hanging over the city, and then finally started walking toward his motorcycle.

_Kathryn . . . Thanks._

With that final thought - and a strange sense that she had heard it, somehow - Seifer started his motorcycle once more and drove off into the living portions of the city. As the buildings started to become less broken and more laive, he felt a throbbing in his chest as his cell phone vibrated. He drew it out and opened it.

"Almasy," he said quickly and loudly enough to be heard.

_"We've tracked down Johnson, sir,"_ came a voice over the phone, that of one of Seifer's lieutenants. _"We've located him at an oil rig north of the city, off the coast. We can give you the details when you return, sir."_

"I'll be there," Seifer responded, and closed his cellphone. His hand pulle dback on the accelerator, and his bike shot forward even faster. He could feel those blood-red eyes following him every inch of the way out of the district and across the city, but Seifer Almasy never looked back.

It was time to settle matters, once and for all.

* * *

-

* * *

So, the mystery is cleared up...maybe. 

This chapter took a little while to do, but ultimately it was very enjoyable. Unlike other chapters, this had no action, instead characterized by thoughts and investigation, so it was a relatively hard one for me to write. I hope it turned out okay.

Until next chapter...


	9. Eighth Job: Settlement

"_Listen up! Teamwork means 'staying out of my way'! It's a Squad B rule! Don't you forget it!"_

_**Eighth Job: Settlement**_

The sun was rising over Galbadia City, but for once in the past few weeks, a certain ex-knight wasn't there to have the view obstructed by the city's skyline. Out here, with the sun peeking over the horizon, only a blue-gray line of dark, salty ocean water stood in the path of the emerging light.

Well, aside from the looming industrial specter of Global Mineral Association #44 Oil Platform, rising up in the distance a quarter of a mile away.

* * *

"_Seifer, man . . . You serious? Doin' this by yourself? Its crazy, ya know . . . ."_

"_Crazy is what I do best, Raijin. You rest now. I'll take care of things."_

_

* * *

The engine of the small inflatable Zodiac boat cut off as its pilot tied it to a small metal platform. Directly overhead was a long line of scaffolding, holding up the extended pipeline that ran the drilled oil from the platform to the shoreline. Along its length ran many small platforms, docking facilities for maintenance crews to check and repair the pipeline._

Seifer Almasy stepped off the Zodiac and onto the dock, and checked his gunblade one last time, before scaling a small ladder that led onto the pipeline itself. He reached the top of the ladder and climbed onto the slightly rusted steel pipe, and, balanced atop the metal cylinder, he edged forward, toward the distant oil rig, and his waiting enemy.

* * *

"_Are you certain about this? I can arrange for backup, or even hire more SeeD troops if you want-"_

"_No, Shiro. This is personal. Just me, and Johnson, and his thugs. My war. My fight. Not the Green Dragons'. Not SeeDs'. _Mine. _I'll settle this my way."_

_

* * *

_

He remained low to the pipeline, balanced and still, as he moved along its length. In the early morning light, it was still too dark to see anything substantial, and it was brightening too much for his enemy to use night vision gear. Now, more than any other time, was the moment to strike. Thus it was that Seifer Almasy remained close to the pipeline as it subtly twisted and turned, every step bringing him closer and closer to the oil rig itself, and his payback.

_

* * *

_

"_Seifer . . . Careful?"_

"_I'm never careful, Fuu. You know that."_

"_Then . . . kick some ass."_

"_That's what I'm best at."_

* * *

Thirty minutes of silence, balance, and stealth, and the ex-knight crouched inside a pumping room inside the lower bowels of the oil rig, one hand on his gunblade as he opened a hatch without a whisper of noise. Not that he needed to be stealthy; the machinery in the pumping room was loud enough to cover any noise he might have made as he slipped outside. He stepped out into the open, salty ocean air, and onto a catwalk overlooking the sea fifty feet below. A quick glance, and the ex-knight spied a man standing on the catwalk in front of him, with his back turned to the intruder.

Unsurprisingly, he was clad in urban camouflage and had a tactical vest and black cap on; an Asp mercenary. He knew that they served as the primary security for the Global Mineral Association's mining operations, but the fact that Johnson was hiding out on this rig confirmed the man's status as an enemy. Without a moment's hesitation, the ex-knight drew his gunblade and slipped in behind the man, a silent, scarred grim reaper.

Seifer threaded a hand around in front of the mercenary and over the man's mouth, and thrust his gunblade into the soldier's back, his enhanced strength driving the blade out the front of the man's chest. Seifer depressed the trigger on Hyperion, and the sonic shot blasted into the soldier's back, liquefying his organs and ending his life in a muffled _thoomp._

_Sucks to be you, pal._

Seifer turned and shoved the dead mercenary off the catwalk and into the ocean below, and moved on.

The sun was still slowly rising to the east as Seifer moved along the outside of the rig, clambering up a series of pipes running along one side of the structure. His junction-enhanced muscles allowed him to move up the side of the tall structure without any trouble, and the ex-knight was on the main level of the oil platform in a matter of minutes. Slipping into the shadows of the arrays of pumping equipment, Seifer worked his way across the platform, keeping an eye open for any more Asp soldiers and pointedly avoiding them. The platform wasn't too large, so he would have an easy time scouring it for his enemy. The ex-knight started across the platform, silent and unseen.

The sun was nearly halfway up on the horizon by the time Seifer had caught the familiar inflections of the man he was looking for. He edged up a hallway, and peeked into an open doorway into what looked like a small kitchen and mess hall for the oil rig's workers. Stepping quietly inside, he took cover behind the long serving counter set up on one side of the room.

"What the hell are you talking about?" came Johnson's voice as Seifer discreetly poked his head over the top of the counter. He peered across the small kitchen and mess hall, and saw the cop jabbing a finger into the chest of a familiar blonde man, and Seifer narrowed his eyes, understanding that the situation had just gotten much more complicated. Bones, meanwhile, simply shrugged and smiled, his coat still proudly displaying the rips and tears from their battle a few days ago.

"The deal is off," Bones replied with a smile, and he turned around and started toward the kitchen's door.

"The fuck do you mean its off?" Johnson responded, following him and shouting angrily. "I fucking _built_ this operation!"

"No," Bones replied, turning and pointing a finger into Johnson's face, forcing the cop into a sudden halt. "No. Me and my people built this up. We secured the contracts, we did the legwork, we did the deals. You just kept things smooth between Asp and the real police and fed us information. That's it."

"What about my damn money?" the cop demanded, and Bones burst out laughing.

"You've made enough on our deals to retire for the rest of your life on some pretty Balamb beach, Johnson," Bones replied, shaking his head. "Which you should do." Bones turned to leave, but Johnson stepped around in front of him.

"And what about those fucking Estharian shitheads and their wannabe SeeD punk?" he asked, though he was sounding less angry than before. "Are we just going to leave them alone? They'll be out for our Hyne-damned heads."

"The Hachikyuusan isn't stupid enough to try and tackle Asp," Bones replied with a shrug. "They may be Estharian, but they're not fucking dumbasses." Seifer hesitated an instant, before making a snap decision to get this over with before the enemy could escape.

"Well, that's not nice." Both men turned and looked across the room, to where Seifer stood, walking out of the dim area behind the cooking line. "I may not be much of a thinker, but I'm no idiot. I just don't give a shit."

"Where the fuck did you come from?" Johnson demanded as he drew his pistol and leveled it at Seifer. The ex-knight grinned and shrugged.

"A magical prancing unicorn dropped me off," he replied. Bones giggled at that, and his hand fell to his sheathed katana as he stepped forward. His left hand reached into his coat and fished out his dragon skull mask, and he started to slip it on.

"Good to see you, Seifer!" he shouted, and strode toward the ex-knight. "The good Sergeant here was just concerned about you coming after us. Now I think we can allay his worries."

"You'll have to kill me first," Seifer reminded Bones, who giggled behind his mask.

"That'll be easy enough," he replied, and then bolted forward, katana bursting from his sheath. "Considering I _can't die!_" Hyperion met the curved blade in a scrape of clashing metal, and Seifer swept the strike aside with a deft twist of his wrist. Hyperion flew upwards in another quick stroke, flying along the front of Bones' chest and sending blood splattering through the air. Bones hissed behind his mask and fell back a half-step, before chopping down again with his katana, the angry crimson wound along his chest sealing up even as the two blades collided again.

Seifer stepped forward into a straight snap-kick as Bones tore his katana away from the gunblade. The ex-knight's foot slammed into the wounded chest as Bones raised his blade over his head, and he was launched backward into the thin steel wall with a brutal _crash_. Seeming to ignore the blow, Bones pushed off the wall as Seifer strode forward, Hyperion ready in a cautious block. The masked man charged at his foe, whipping his katana across in a vicious hack that smashed into the gunblade and nearly threw it out of Seifer's hand. The ex-knight dropped low into a kick at Bones' ankles, his leg sliding forward and crashing into his foe's left leg, throwing the madman's balance off. Bones toppled forward, over Seifer, and turned his descent into a rolling tumble across the room. He came up on his feet and spun toward Seifer, in time for Hyperion to slide between his ribs and burst out his back. He grunted in surprised pain, and looked down at the injury in his torso, a wound that would have killed any normal human.

"How bothersome," he whispered behind his mask as his katana flew across, nearly severing Seifer's head. The ex-knight had to duck and leap backward, pulling his gunblade free of his enemy's chest, and Bones surged forward, launching a flurry of two-handed chops with his katana. Hyperion flashed in the air between the two warriors, picking off the blows with deft precision, Seifer using his skill to deflect his foe's mad fury. Bones pushed ahead, screaming and laughing at the same time, not seeming to care if his chops were being parried. He continued attacking, and Seifer parried and deflected, before launching a quick counter that sent Hyperion flicking over Bones' throat. Blood gushed out of his enemy's neck as the gunblade severed Bones' trachea, but it barely seemed to slow down the regenerating madman as he pressed on, the flow stopping as soon as it started.

"My turn!" Bones screamed in sadistic glee, his katana descending once more and slamming into Hyperion. This time, however, he bulled forward, pressing the blade down and forcing Hyperion backwards until the flat of the gunblade was almost against Seifer's throat. With a wild peal of laughter, Bones suddenly twisted his arms, raising the handle of his katana, and changing the angle at which his blade met Hyperion's, and sending the blade against Seifer's throat. He pulled backward, and the cold steel cut along Seifer's neck, blood erupting as the katana severed his right carotid artery. Seifer jerked backward, crimson splashing from the wound, and he immediately put a hand to his neck, realizing the danger. Magic pulsed from his fingertips and into his neck as his heart beat faster, the ex-knight understanding just how serious this cut was.

Bones stood there, laughing, as Seifer fell back, blood soaking his fingers as glimmering magical energy sought to seal the lethal gouge in his throat, and darkness started tugging at Seifer's vision as his brain began to lose oxygen. He stared at Bones, anger and hate flying through his mind, and his right hand grasped Hyperion tightly as his left poured energy into the deadly wound.

Amber light suddenly surged around Seifer Almasy, and his left hand flew away from his neck and toward his foe, releasing a burst of flaming _ki_ from his fingers that stabbed into the giggling Bones' chest. He was blasted backward a step, and was reeling even as Hyperion flashed forward, and Seifer's hate manifested itself as a spinning wave of destruction that arced across the room and into Bones' torso. A foot-wide gap of flesh and bone stretching from his neck to his stomach was blasted away as the burst of energy ripped through him and hurled the shocked madman through the steel wall and outside the kitchen hall.

Seifer stared at the hole in the wall, and as he watched, the darkness creeping around the edges of his vision began to fade away as his blood vessels healed. He turned toward where Johnson had been standing, feeling the hot blood from his neck soaking his shirt, but saw that the officer had vanished. Cursing to himself, Seifer rushed out the only door leading from the kitchen and onto an external walkway of the oil rig. He looked left and right, his head snapping back and forth, but he failed to see Johnson anywhere in sight.

Seifer did, however, manage to see the incoming right hook a second before it cracked into his jaw and tossed him backwards off his feet.

"Good shot, Seifer!" Bones snarled, his eyes wide with manic glee, as he towered over Seifer, katana raised to strike. The sucking chest wound was steadily sealing and fading as he lifted his weapon. "Let me return the favor!" Seifer's legs snapped out and closed in a swift scissors kick that ensnared Bones' legs and threw him off his feet, and the ex-knight kicked up to his feet. Hyperion snapped down and intercepted a prone katana cut as Bones rolled away and pushed himself up to his feet, and then leapt at Seifer, whipping his blade back and forth. Seifer's gunblade deflected one blow, and he ducked under a second, and then Bones shot ahead with one-handed thrust. Seifer twisted aside, Hyperion scraping against the striking katana, and then Bones dipped low with his left shoulder. The ex-knight's eyes widened as the masked figure's left hand flew up in a powerful uppercut directly into Seifer's chin.

The ex-knight was lifted off his feet and hurled straight up into the jumbled mass of pipes directly overhead. His shoulder smashed into a pipe, and the impact spun him around. Purely by instinct, his left hand flew out ans snagged onto another pipe, whipping Seifer around to land on a narrow tube barely the width of his leg. Seifer scrambled up onto it as best he could, and heard the hollow ring of boots hitting a pipe less than five feet away. Still awkwardly trying to gain his balance, Seifer looked up and brought Hyperion across, in time to catch and stop a slashing katana, Bones' mad giggle filling his ears.

_How the hell did he hit that hard? And jump this high? Is he junctioned too?_

He didn't get an answer to that unspoken question, as Bones wasted no time hacking away with his katana, the slender blade flying and slashing down at the ex-knight. Hyperion rang against the weapon as Seifer leapt backward, onto a thicker pipe, and Bones pursued, still laughing with perverse joy as his weapon smashed against Seifer's. With a flick of his wrist, Seifer knocked the slender katana to the left and down as it met his gunblade, and the ex-knight jerked ahead with a downward slash that cut out the tendons of Bones' right knee. The masked man stumbled and fell to that knee, his leg banging loudly against the pipe, and Seifer snapped his weapon across in a quick cut that split Bones' throat and windpipe.

Crimson burst from behind and below the mask as Bones gurgled something in anger and pain, and he shot up to his feet as the gouged knee sealed up. Katana and gunblade collided once more, and Seifer spun around low, Hyperion slashing slow and into the front of Bones' left ankle. He squealed in pain as his throat repaired itself, and Seifer rose into a high kick that smashed into the bloodied mask. The madman's head was snapped back, and he fell away a step, limping painfully as Seifer charged in, his gunblade slashing and flashing. One, two, then three bright red cuts traced across Bones' chest as the gunblade dug in, and crimson burst from all three wounds, chasing the hacking Hyperion as it struck.

Then Bones leapt ahead at Seifer, katana sweeping across in another wild, powerful strike, and the ex-knight gave way, cursing as he saw all three gushing chest wounds seal up with nary a scratch to show for his effort. The two blades collided again, and in desperation, Seifer thrust a hand forward, focusing his willpower. Ice formed between his fingers as he channeled a Blizzara spell, and a huge icy spike flashed forward, impaling the masked madman. Bones snarled in pain, and hacked down with his katana even before the ice had finished resolving itself, and Seifer had to leap backward to avoid being decapitated. His feet touched the pipe, and Seifer shot ahead with a thrust as Bones smashed his katana down into the icy spike, partially shattering it. Even as shards of frozen water rained past his knees, Bones felt Hyperion slide into his ribcage and burst out his back. There was a brief instance of stillness as he glanced down at the gunblade in his torso.

"Only pain," Seifer heard Bones hiss behind his mask, and the katana flew up at Seifer's head. He leaned backward and pulled Hyperion's trigger twice rapidly, and a pair of concussive blasts shot down the weapon's length, blowing a ragged, bloody hole the size of a grapefruit in the masked man's torso. The shuddering blasts threw off Bones' aim, and his blade slashed along Seifer's right cheek and up past the bridge of his nose, cutting across the old scar Squall had given him. Hissing in pain, Seifer leapt backward, pulling his blade free of Bones' chest, and spun around into an overhead cleave in mid-air. Hyperion flew downward and itno the mask and the face beyond, cleaving clean through from left eye to right jaw. Crimson flew from both men's faces as they reeled from the wounds they were suffering. As Seifer stumbled backward, left hand to his face, he understood the complete futility of this battle.

Bones had survived a dozen lethal wounds thus far and kept on coming. And at this rate, Seifer was going to succumb to his injuries long before he would figure out how to kill Bones. There was no way he could do enough damage to his enemy to permanently put him out of the fight with what he had. This oil derrick would be his grave if he-

_Oil._

Staring through his bloodied eyes, Seifer could see Bones' face heal, the bones and skin repairing themselves and a new eye appearing where the old one had been gouged out. His pained expression gave way to a new manic smile, and he grasped his katana tightly as he started walking forward. Seifer grasped his weapon tightly, the tip hovering just above the pipe.

"Only a matter of time now, eh?" he asked as he advanced. "You really are pathetic, Seifer. No powers, no unique abilities, nothing. Mommy would be disappointed."

"What do you know about her?" Seifer demanded, and he could taste the salty flavor of his own blood in his mouth. Bones shrugged and his grin became toothy and hungry.

"My boss knows more than he's telling me," Bones explained, and then shot toward Seifer, snarling as he did so. He closed in with Seifer, eyes widening with anticipation of more blood. The ex-knight waited another heartbeat, and then his arm pumped, but not up into the path of the descending katana.

Seifer suddenly ducked and spun away, beneath the blade, and his gunblade fired, Hyperion blasting a gaping hole into the pipe it had just been trust through. Black, crude fluid erupted from the hole, splashing over Bones as he rushed forward, drenching him in oil.

Seifer came out of the spin with one arm raised, focusing his willpower, and a spark of flame flashed from his fingers and into Bones as he fell backward, covered in the unrefined and _very_ flammable fuel.

Seifer dove aside and off the piping as the fire magic struck the oil and set it alight, instantly immolating Bones in a torrent of white-hot incandescent fury. Glowing fires erupted all across his body as the crude oil blazed, and his agonized scream tore at Seifer's ears as the ex-knight hit the platform below the mass of pipes and ran as fast as he could, for he knew what was going to happen next.

Up above, on the pipe. Bones thrashed and screamed as his flesh was seared away by the blaze, but was unaware as the flames struck the gushing oil emerging from the pipe and burned deeper, consuming the black fluid and running down into the piping itself. White-hot flames spread in an instant, setting alight the fuel in the piping and shooting through the entire upper half of the oil rig in a matter of moments.

Less than five seconds after Bones had been set alight, Seifer was hurled off his feet as the entire upper half of the oil rig exploding into a roiling wave of hellfire and noise. Molten shards of metal rained down at the ex-knight as he rolled across the platform and scrambled to his feet, skin baking under the intense flames. A broken pipe crashed down before him, and he leapt over the flaming wreckage as the rig began to collapse onto itself, creaking and squealing as metal gave way.

The rig buckled and twisted under the collapsing weight, and Seifer rushed ahead, looking for a way off the structure. He ducked through a pumping room, the machinery melting and twisted as the fluids they had been drawing had caught alight, and the ex-knight smashed through a flimsy metal door before him.

The heat dropped slightly, and Seifer saw he was standing at the edge of a platform overlooking the ocean. Down below, he could see a small dock, where several people, most of them Asp mercenaries, were scrambling aboard a small cargo ship and a pair of speedboats. One of the men, he saw immediately, was Johnson. Snarling, Seifer put a hand on the railing of the platform, preparing to vault off.

"_SEIFER!"_

He hesitated an instant as he heard the voice behind him, and spun around, the logical part of his mind screaming at him that there was _no way_ he was still alive after that explosion. But logic had little sway over the fact that, bursting from the door, there was a charging madman with a half-molten katana in his hands, a skull mask blackened and almost unrecognizable, and a torrent of flames shooting off his body, his unnatural regeneration replacing his burning skin even as it was being seared away.

Seifer barely raised his gunblade in time to block the descending katana. Bones' blade slammed into Seifer's weapon, and the deformed metal flew apart in a shower of sparks and malformed steel. Bones' left arm flew across in a wild punch that smashed into Seifer's jaw and nearly threw him from the platform, and left searing third-degree burns across his face.

A flaming hand shot around Seifer's throat, and his skin began to sizzle under the heat as Bones lifted him up into the air, screaming inarticulately. The ex-knight thrust his gunblade into Boines' chest as he was lifted up, but the flaming lunatic seemed to not care.

"_Die!" _Seifer heard him scream as the fires continued eating away at his skin, subjecting Bones to unimaginable pain. "Burn in _hell, Seifer_!"

Unheard over the screams of the raging, blazing Bones, however, was a faint _click._ Seifer swung his right arm up and toward Bones, and within that forearm arm, the cleverly constructed cybernetic replacement for the hand Squall Leonhart had severed two years ago in Galbadia Garden, a .50 caliber, single shot cannon emerged and pointed directly at the blackened mask covering Bones' face.

There was sound, and Seifer's arm was flung backward by the force of the blow as the bullet erupted from the cannon, lanced into the mask, through Bones' forehead and into his brain, and out the back of his head, shattering his skull and mask into a thousand blackened, burning pieces.

Seifer hit the floor, his knees nearly buckling as he fell back against the dock. He glared down at the body of bones as it fell backwards, thoroughly decapitated, and the cybernetic cannon in his wrist slid back into place. The corpse toppled backward to the deck, thudding quietly over the roar of the blazing oil derrick. Seifer clutched his neck, where the skin was bleeding and burnt, and panted, not realizing he'd been holding his breath. Finally, he stood up straight, and peered down at Bones' body, before pointing at it.

"Stay."

With that command to the rabid dog at his feet, Seifer turned back toward the railing, and climbed up on it. He peered down at the docks, and at the two small speedboats that were being untied. He crouched, tensing his legs to leap.

Pressure clamped around his ankle, holding him in place, and Seifer spun around, and stared straight into the regrowing lower jaw of a burning madman who _would not fucking die._

Seifer Almasy could only stare in horror as he saw skull bones takes shape around the lower jaw, and skin and blood vessels start to spread over them, and catching aflame nearly as quickly as they regrew. Dark gray matter started to form as the upper jaw and eye sockets took shape, Bones screaming something inarticulate as his head _grew back._

"You can't kill me, Seifer!" he heard the madman scream, and he smiled, even as his face burned. "I don't die! _She won't let me die_!"

Hyperion flew up into Bones' screaming, smiling face, and Seifer double-tapped the trigger, shattering his skull a second time as he leapt backward, no longer thinking, and only _acting_, to get the hell away from this monster that didn't obey the laws of nature.

There was silence for a single long second as the air whipped past Seifer's body, and then he smashed down hard onto the wooden and metal walkway leading toward the docks. He stared up at the blazing hulk of the oil derrick overhead, and saw no burning, regenerating psychopath pursuing, but that did little to calm Seifer's pounding heart. After another second of hesitation, the ex-knight kicked up to his feet, his back aching only slightly from the collision, and he turned around, in time to see both the light freighter and one of the speedboats pull away from the dock. The second speedboat still remained, the two mercenaries manning it desperately untying the boat from its mooring.

They had barely managed to get the last coil of rope released when Seifer Almasy hit the back of the boat, landing from one of his insane junction-enhanced leaps, Hyperion drawn and ready. One Asp soldier spun, drawing his knife from its shoulder sheath and stabbing at the ex-knight, but Seifer slapped his left hand down on the knife hand's wrist, throwing it down and aside. Hyperion replied to the deflected thrust, the slender blade arcing through the man's throat and sending him spinning around off the side of the boat. The second Asp soldier raised his rifle at the ex-knight, but Seifer was already there, Hyperion swiping across and smashing into the rifle's barrel, before arcing back. The gunblade sliced through the man's chest, and the weapon released a burst of concussive force, blasting apart armor, flesh, and bone, and hurling the mercenary off the side of the speedboat to splash into the water.

_Nice change of pace: people I can _kill.

The enemy had already started the speedboat's engine, so it was simply a case of gunning the boat's engine, and Seifer was off, jetting across the water after the escaping speedboat with Johnson. Ocean spray filled the air as he shot across the water, rapidly closing in with the speedboat ahead, intent on finishing this once and for all.

* * *

"Its him!" came a shout from behind Johnson as he gunned the engine on his speedboat. The cop glanced back, past the two Asp soldiers standing behind him on the speedboat, and spotted the second boat in close pursuit. And driving that boat was the bloodied, scarred face of Seifer Almasy.

"Shit!" Johnson shouted. "What the hell are you waiting on? Blast that fucker!" The Asp soldiers immediately shouldered their rifles ad sighted the pursuing boat, and the chattering roar of their rifles filled the air as the opened up. Bursts of gunfire blazed from their weapons as the cop oriented the speedboat toward the shoreline. No more than fifty feet behind them, Seifer's own speedboat swerved aside, the hull pocked with bullet holes as the mercenaries plugged his ship repeatedly.

Then there was the whooshing rush of striking flame, and suddenly one of the rifles was silenced as Seifer's boat swung toward their port side. A scream of pain could be heard, and the unmistakable think of a man hitting the deck filled Johnson's ears. He glanced back, and saw one of his men was down, his chest charred by a fire spell, and pulling alongside their ship came Seifer's speedboat.

The surviving mercenary dropped the magazine from his rifle as he moved to reload, and in that moment, Seifer sent his boat sideslipping across the ocean surface to slam into Johnson's vehicle. The reloading mercenary stumbled and fell to the deck as Seifer raised a hand to fire of another spell. Cursing, Johnson spun his wheel to port while pulling his sidearm. He spun toward Seifer even as his boat started to turn around the ex-knight's ship, and fired several shots at the bloodied figure's face. Two shots smashed through the windshield, and Seifer ducked behind cover as Johnson broke free and shot across Seifer's bow and across the open water.

Behind him, the remaining Asp soldier had climbed to his feet and finished sliding a new magazine into his weapon. He turned toward Seifer's boat as it pivoted and sped toward them, through the wall of ocean spray Johnson was leaving in the morning air. His rifle once again belched bullets across the intervening distance, and Johnson began to angle his boat back toward land. At the same time, the cop reached for the boat's radio, intending to make a call to the Galbadian Coast Guard. If they could get a helicopter gunship out here, they could blast this damn ex-cadet out of the water-

There was the crackle of lighting, a cry of agony, and Johnson was knocked forward against his vehicle's wheel as the remaining mercenary was thrown off his feet by a bolt of lightning. The boat started to spin out of control, but Johnson turned the wheel violently, trying to regain control.

An instant later, Seifer Almasy, his speedboat right behind Johnson's, sent another blast of fire straight into the rear of the boat, coring the engine and setting it ablaze.

"Son of a bitch!" shouted Johnson as his engine caught on fire. He had only moments to leap to safety, and he started to turn to dive overboard, when the boat rocked slightly. He turned around, in time to feel Seifer Almasy clamp his left hand on his right shoulder and spin him around.

A half-second later, Hyperion stabbed through his chest and erupted out his back. Seifer stared remorselessly into Johnson's face as he pulled the gunblade's trigger, blasting pieces of Johnson out the hole in his back and wiping away any semblance of life that remained in his body. The gunblade was torn free of the dying officer's body, and Seifer tossed him down against the wheel of his boat, before turning and leaping across the twenty feet to his own ship. He landed, tossed Hyperion behind his seat, and revved the engine once more, before turning and driving his boat back toward shore.

Behind him, the fire on Johnson's boat finally caught up to the gas tank, and an orange fireball blossomed behind the ex-knight as he left the destroyed ship and the burning oil rig on the horizon. His cell phone flicked open, and he pressed a button.

"Hey, Raijin? Tell Fujin I'm coming home."

The sun continued to ascend into the sky as Seifer's boat cut across the water toward the shore, the cool spray flying in his face as he headed home.


	10. Final Job: CleanUp

_**Final Job: Clean-up**_

No one raised a finger, and no one spoke a word of challenge as he walked through the warehouse. Regular workers and Anarak gorillas simply stood aside as he strode through the building, a pair of sunglasses obscuring his eyes as he advances. All of them know this man, and know who he is; word travels fast in the underground, and as a name circulated, so too did memories, and along with those memories came _reputation_.

His coat, a new, stylish red trenchcoat, waved behind him as he walked past fearful guards and workers, and the man showed no fear or hesitation. He knew, and so did they, that no Anarak soldier would dare raise a weapon against Seifer Almasy, _saiko-komon_ of the Green Dragons.

Finally, after several minutes of striding across the building and entering the richly paneled hallways of the Anarak offices, Seifer met actual resistance, in the form of two large, rifle-carrying guards in black suits. They stood in the hallway leading to the main office, and barred his path. Seifer came to a stop within arm's reach of the two guards, who made no move to attack nor step aside.

"Step aside," Seifer growled quietly. "This is my business. Not yours."

"Can't let you through," one of the large guards replied, though he seemed more like he was saying it due to duty, not desire.

"You don't want to die for him, do you?" Seifer asked pointedly, and the two guards hesitated. They glanced to each other, and then were pushed aside as Seifer shoved between them, his junction-enhanced strength giving him the physical power to throw these men aside with hardly any effort. Once again, they made no move to stop the brazen gangster as he stalked down the hallway toward the huge double doors that led into Enrico Fornes' office.

The doors flew open, and Seifer strode into the office, grinning as his eyes fell upon the thin figure of Enrico Fornes as he sat behind his desk. Over his shoulder hovered the black-clad specter of Nicolai, who met Seifer's gaze impassively, his expression unreadable.

"Hey, kid, welcome back," Enrico remarked, smiling, placing his hand over his .45 revolver, a not-too-subtle warning. "What brings you here, eh?" Though he wore a tempered grin, Seifer could feel Enrico's fear, like a hunting predator, and that fear drove Seifer forward a step. Nicholai and Enrico tensed, the Trabian agent even stepping aside to give himself a clear shot at Seifer.

"You set me up," Seifer replied quietly, narrowing his eyes behind his shades. "Time to become a stain, Enrico."

"Really now," Enrico replied, leaning back. "Nicholai, don't you have an objection to this kind of language?" He glanced to the Trabian, who nodded and walked forward, around the desk. Seifer watched the agent warily as the man moved before him, and Nicholai's hands tensed. Seifer's fingers tightened around his gunblade as he locked eyes with the Trabian, their irises obscured by their sunglasses.

"Is this how it has to be?" Seifer muttered, and every muscle in his body hardened, preparing to strike. Nicholai was silent for several moments, and then quietly exhaled.

"It is regretful that our business arrangements had to come to this," he commented, and shook his head. "Things could have been different."

"If you hadn't betrayed me, they might have," Seifer replied, and Nicholai slowly nodded.

"Truly regrettable, indeed," the Trabian whispered, and his hands twitched.

Seifer was ducking, Hyperion whipping out as he started to spin aside to evade the shot. Yet, he had barely begun to move when Nicholai's handguns erupted from their holsters and fired, the cracking reports filling the office.

There was an empty, expectant stillness as Seifer stood there, his eyes widening in amazed surprise.

"If only you had listened to me, Enrico," Nicholai added as he stared at his boss, and lowered his pistols. Enrico did not reply; it was rather difficult, as crimson flowed from twin punctures in his forehead, his face locked in surprise and confusion as he slumped back in his chair.

Nicholai's sidearms slid back into their holsters as Seifer rose, still not sure what was happening, and the Trabian stepped up beside his former boss. He placed a hand on the dead man's shoulders and then casually shoved him out of the chair and onto the floor.

"I disagreed with him about what we should do with you," Nicholai whispered as he settled into the chair. He leaned forward, clasping his hands together, and rested his forehead against his knuckles. "He was a fool to oppose you. I knew the moment that I understood who you were, that you were infinitely more dangerous that anticipated. But Enrico did not see what I saw. He did not respect you, Seifer Almasy."

"And you do?" Seifer asked as Hyperion returned to its sheath. The Trabian chuckled quietly, and nodded.

"You, who have become the second in command to the Green Dragons, and who had the courage to stand against Asp," Nicholai stated, and shook his head. "You have earned your place in this underworld, I assure you. And I am not foolish enough to try to fight you."

"So where do we stand now?" Seifer asked, and Nicholai shrugged.

"Anarak is mine now," he replied. "I ask that we respect one another and keep to our respective territory. There is no reason for either you or I to wish to engage in a street war. Its poor business, and I do not wish to fight _you_, in particular. You are not my enemy, Seifer, and I view you as a comrade in our dark little world, _da?_" Seifer nodded, stepped forward toward the Trabian, and extended his hand.

"Friendship?" he asked, and Nicholai nodded, stood, and took Seifer's hand.

"To peace, friendship, and profit, Comrade Almasy."

* * *

It was a dark room, which fitted the equally dark business that went on inside of it. The walls of the room, shrouded in shadows and thus at an uncertain distance, were lined with sound absorbent materials and a particularly advanced array of ECM jammers to prevent eavesdropping. After all, if anyone knew what kind of business was discussed in this room that did not exist, there would be . . . _unpleasant _repercussions.

Seven men were seated at the table, with one woman rounding out the group. Or rather, there should have been seven men and one woman, but the last of the group was out on a particularly ill-advised line of business.

"So, the operation in Dollet is underway," remarked one of the men, a brown-haired figure of small stature, barely over five feet and six inches. The man leaned forward, clasping his hands together. "Our contacts are already making their moves, and I've got Asp troops ready to support them."

"Good," remarked the man at the head of the table, a lightly-tanned man with a perfectly shaved head. A thin black mustache and goatee framed his mouth and rested upon his chin as he leaned back in his chair. "Our main research on that island has been removed, correct, Doppel?"

"Most of it, sir," the man named Doppel replied. "The remainder we've got in comparatively low-key locations. We figure it will only take a few hours for the situation there to be resolved anyway."

"Excellent," the bald man replied. He leaned forward, and nodded toward another man at the table. "Now, to our next order of business. It seems that our resident evolutionary success here has had some encounters. We need to address this situation. I'm sure you're all aware of the reappearance of Kathryn's other son, so we'll go straight to the operation. Bones?"

The blonde man who bore a painfully similar appearance to his brother grinned his typical insane grin, and waved a hand in the air.

"He's good," he explained. "Real good. Not only has Seifer buried himself inside a power structure that we can exploit, but I've got lines on his weaknesses. We can manipulate him real good now." His fingers twitched, and all of those assembled could see the manic, blood-thirsty gleam in his eyes.

"That is really irrelevant," the bald man replied. "What I need to know is . . . how much does he know? And has he really manifested unusual abilities?"

"He's a damn good fighter, if that's what you want to know," Bones replied with a shrug.

"He killed Bones ten times,' remarked one of the men across the table, and the madman grinned and giggled.

"But as for what he knows . . . ." Bones slowly shrugged. "I think he knows about Mommy."

The bald man went silent, and lowered his head, closing his eyes, before finally looking up.

"If he knows _anything_ about his mother, he is a serious danger." He slowly looked around the room, before settling his eyes on Doppel and the man next to him, a dark-clad man with shimmering white-tipped hair, with black roots..

"LeBlanc," he stated. "We cannot afford to let an actor we have no control over operate, especially when he may or may not be aware of the circumstances surrounding his birth. If anything in regards to the Womb project were to get out . . . Well, we can't have that happening. Mobilize your Archons. Find Almasy, and _kill him._"

"Of course," replied the white-haired man, who slowly nodded. "If he does present a danger to us, I will have him removed."

"Excellent," replied the bald man, smiling. "Now, it is time for us to address the area in Centra where we will-" The bald man stopped as one end of the room opened, a rectangular portal slid open. Those within remained deathly silent as the figure started across the room, and remained that way until the portal slid back into place.

The man, clad in a blue robe with golden cloth fasteners, and with an odd blonde beard and dark hair, settled into the empty chair, directly across from the bald figure, and smiled.

"Soval," he asked, "What did I miss?"

"You were absent, Sion," the bald man, Soval, replied. "I was under the impression that you may have indulged in a certain . . . _desire_ of yours."

"I did, though it seems that Garden did not react favorably to my visit," Sion said with a wide grin. Soval stared for a long while at the bearded man across from him, and then closed his eyes.

"Gentlemen, may I have a brief word with my second, in private?" the others nodded and silently stood, filing out of the room through another rectangular portal, leaving Sion and Soval alone.

"Dammit, Sion!" Soval shouted, slamming a fist into the table. "Now is not the time to be engaging in your petty vendettas with SeeD!"

"Petty?" Sion echoed, narrowing his eyes. "I would not call what we are here to engage in 'petty'."

"You attacked Garden, didn't you?" Soval hissed. "They know someone is out here! Someone who intends to-" Soval stopped, and went silent for a long moment, before frowning. "I am not pleased, Sion."

"Nothing we can do about it now," the bearded man replied, and then smiled. "So, I got word from LeBlanc that you want Seifer Almasy dead." Soval blinked, and then narrowed his eyes.

"How did you-"

"Secrets of the Magi, Soval," replied Sion. "That's why we're partners, right? So . . . ." he sat forward. "Why are you so worried about Seifer Almasy?" To this, Soval slowly chuckled, and opened his mouth to answer.

* * *

The streets of Galbadia City were bright and filled with people as Seifer Almasy drove back toward his new home, and his new life as one of the most powerful men in this city.

He looked left, and he looked right, his crimson coat flapping in the wind as he passed through streets that he now virtually owned, and Seifer Almasy smiled.

As those eyes moved, however, something slowly shifted. Perhaps a passerby would have though it was the gleam from the multitude of neon lights, but it seemed that, for an instant, the blue-gray of Seifer's eyes became a deep, dark blood_ red_.

Across the city, in the deepest, darkest depths of the Auburn District, far beneath a distant, decrepit hospital, a little girl smiled, and her soft, amused laugh echoed through caverns and tunnels endless in their depth.

* * *

"The answer," Soval whispered, replying to his partner's unstated question, "is that I do not _fear _Seifer. I am merely concerned with more important matters surround him, his birth, and his mother." He leaned forward, and a dark smile cut across his features.

"Evolution, Sion. _Evolution_."

* * *

**_To be continued . . . ._**

* * *

Why yes, that is Sion from Full Spectrum SeeD. How is he here? That's a seeeeeecret. )

Thus concludes Ronin, but not Seifer's particular story arc.

Until next story . . . .


End file.
